From: rjl+@pitt.edu (Richard J. Loether)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.marrou
Subject: Re: Libertarian Platform
Date: 16 Nov 92 15:15:18 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Pittsburgh

In article <97583@netnews.upenn.edu> ingraham@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (James Ingraham) writes:
|In article <BxoA7x.AyK@encore.com> rcollins@encore.com (Roger Collins) writes:
|
|cdt@sw.stratus.com (C. D. Tavares) writes:
|[Talk about food labels deleted deleted.
|
|
||Libertarians do not oppose the government's enforcing laws against fraud.
||However, if you think that the FDA has solved the problem of vague
||claims like "lite" and "low-sodium," then you haven't been reading food
||labels.  If you think that producers will not use "good" labels unless
||they are forced by the government, then you haven't heard about free
||market economics.  If you think that the public is not responsible
||enough or capable of determining what a "good" label is (through a free
||market), why would you ever want other people (elected officials)
||mandating what all labels should look like?
|
|This is one place a "free market" system can't really define things.  If you
|go to the FDA, and ask what constitutes as "lite," they will give you a 
|precise definition.  If you go and ask what constitutes "diet" or "sugar-free"
|or "low-sodium," they'll give you precise definitions, in percentages, 
|miligrams, or whatever.  

Who says the free market can't define things?  If you look closely you
may see that the free market defines the things the customers care about and
leaves the rest alone.  Even with a variety of sizes included we don't have
much trouble with names like 'compact' car or 'soothing' cough drop.  If a
product doesn't work as advertised it gets a very short sales run at the
local K-Mart, without government interference. Do we really need the FDA 
to define every word on a product label?  Perhaps we should insist on 
official government definitions for 'tasty gravy', 'exciting novels', 'fast 
cars', 'pretty girls', 'comfortable jeans', 'stylish outerwear', etc.  The 
list can easily be endless and what would it get us?  

|                         Unless some group of people gets together and decides
|what these terms mean for EVERY SINGLE PRODUCER, then the terms are 
|meangingless.  So whether or not people will lie, cheat, steal, or whatever
|in order to sell their product is irrelevant; 

Lying, cheating and stealing are quite relavent.  It is perfectly proper
for the government to protect you against fraud.  It is NOT proper for the
government to objectively define every subjective word in the language.
As long as someone doesn't claim his product to be 'sugar-free' when it's not,
what's the real difference between .001g of sugar above the line and .001g
below?  If it's that important to you, you read the side of the package
anyway.  

|                                              SOMEBODY has to decide what those
|terms mean objectively, empiraclly, and universally.  

Why?  See above.  

|                                                  The government is the 
|only institution I know of that could possibly do that, and even it's having a
|hard time.  There's no way you'd get General Mills to sit down with Kraft and
|work it out.  And incidentally, it IS fraud to say something is "sugar free"
|when it's not; some people are affected very badly by sugar.  You can actually
|be alergic to caffine, and I'd hate to pick up a "caffine free!" soda only to
|discover it wasn't.  People can get seriously sick, if not die, from stuff like
|this.  And it's not so much that I think business will instantly try to lie if
|the laws are lifted (all though I have some concern), it's that without any
|way to set a standard, the terms become meaningless.
|
Standards are great but the government is the wrong group to set them.  There
are already product reviewing agencies doing the job for us and doing it well.  
As long as nobody lies about sugar or caffiene content, as you mention above,
who cares if a company puts a meaningless word on their label?  Besides,  you
might just happen to LIKE  a brand pf pancake syrup that has 1.001 times the
legal limit of sugar in it.

|-James
|University of Pennsylvania
|ingraham@eniac.seas.upenn.edu

RJL
-- 
Rich Loether (rjl@unix.cis.pitt.edu)
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