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Let's give this another try.
Human rights and civil liberty violations as well as corruption, waste, fraud, and secrecy are prime examples or government folly.
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Allowing government to form a closed loop with big business, excluding the citizenry, is major folly.
Lobby money buys corporate stooges as canditates who then pass corportate-friendly laws so that corporations make more money (at the expense of actual working citizens), which they then use to buy more candidates...
Is allowing want when it has the power to prevent it also government folly?
No.
Yay!!
This time around, the Galtic Committee of Public Safety shall have no compunctions about taking anti-social elements out behind the National Razor and spanking them.
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No.Oh good, starving to death is less dead than being shot by police. Good to know!
This level of intellectual vacancy and dishonesty is why it's not useful to engage you.
Conn. homeowner wrongly billed $10,000+ for 25 years for streetlightsIsn't that really corporate folly? The state's Office of Consumer Counsel helped get the customer reimbursed.
Yup. While corporate and government folly are often deeply intertwined this looks like a straight forward case of corporate incompetence or malfeasance. As such it's a poor choice for this thread.
The Food-Safety Fallacy: More Regulation Doesn’t Necessarily Make Food SaferDid you even read this paper? Half of the arguments were that regulations were too weak and thus inefficient, or existed only to rubber-stamp voluntary observation of the law.
Timeline of FDA raids on raw milk farmers, dietary supplement makers and natural medicine practitionersLet's read that article, shall we?
What you see from this is a pattern of government-sponsored terrorism against innocent Americans and small business people.And about half of the story is sourced to myopia.org, a site that claims that nearsightedness is caused by corrective lenses, cataracts can be cured with special eye drops (that they sell), and that nearsightedness can be cured with pinhole eyeglasses (which they also sell).
This thread is just as bad an idea as it was last time. If someone wants to read dubiously-sourced claims of government mistakes, reason.com is a thing that exists.
Yes I read the article. Did you miss every example where the FDA makes us less safe?
I would think it's obvious that I don't agree with everything on Myopia. I would also suspect that we might agree that waging a war on raw milk with armed raids is stupid and abusive of government power, but I might be wrong.
If you don't care for the thread then why post on it? Feel free to use the hide function.
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I have in my finely-crafted link a case of seventy-one billion wasted by the US government every year. I wouldn't spend the money this way, but that's enough to buy fifteen Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. It's a pretty massive chunk of change.
Yes I read the article. Did you miss every example where the FDA makes us less safe?I don't think it suits your narrative to say "The FDA (and USDA, which is a great deal of the legal paper) makes us less safe because its regulations aren't comprehensive enough or enforced effectively," but okay, sure.
I would think it's obvious that I don't agree with everything on Myopia. I would also suspect that we might agree that waging a war on raw milk with armed raids is stupid and abusive of government power, but I might be wrong.A "war on raw milk"? For one, most of that article isn't about raw milk. For another, it averages one example a year over a span of 27 years, and most of those cases are sourced to hilariously unreliable sources like myopia.org or this same "naturalnews" site.
So this "war on raw milk" is an abuse of government power, sure, just like the "war on unicorns" is.
If you don't care for the thread then why post on it? Feel free to use the hide function.I don't care for misinformation. Just pretending it doesn't exist won't make it go away.
Do you really think an armed raid is an appropriate reaction to the possession of raw milk?
I know you're a big fan of government control, but that seems a bit silly even for you.
How far should the government go to control what adults put in their own bodies in your opinion?
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Do you really think an armed raid is an appropriate reaction to the possession of raw milk?No, but I don't think it's a common or widespread problem, and the problem there is the "armed raid" coming from police militarization (which is a serious problem) and not the raw milk part.
How far should the government go to control what adults put in their own bodies in your opinion?How free should people be to sell dangerous scams as food? The second hit for "raw milk" in Google (after Wikipedia) was this, which begins, "There's little mention in the mainstream media these days, of traditional foods having healing properties." So no, I am not sympathetic to people selling snake oil. I don't think you should have THE FREEDOM to scam people, even if the free market will somehow let you. (PS the free market does f~%*all about scams.)
Fraud is already a crime. Fraud should be prosecuted even though it rarely is.
I think people should be free to decide what they put in their own bodies, but I think crimes without victims should not be crimes.
I also tend to trust people to make better choices for themselves than the state. Some people will make choices that I think are foolish, but I am also of the belief that they own themselves, and they are free to make choices that don't harm others or their property.
Obviously we have opposing views regarding personal freedom.
I also tend to trust people to make better choices for themselves than the state. Some people will make choices that I think are foolish, but I am also of the belief that they own themselves, and they are free to make choices that don't harm others or their property.
Obviously we have opposing views regarding personal freedom.
Some people make choices for other people (read: parents for their kids) and those choices can be extremely harmful if it's just a free-for-all. Now, you can say that, yes, they will indeed be punished because of existing laws. The problem is, though, that it's always after the fact and after the harm is done. So it should be in everyone's best interest to keep certain harmful products off the market.
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Fraud is already a crime. Fraud should be prosecuted even though it rarely is.
I think people should be free to decide what they put in their own bodies, but I think crimes without victims should not be crimes.
Selling contaminated food as a health panacea has obvious victims, even if you manage to trick people into buying it.
I also tend to trust people to make better choices for themselves than the state. Some people will make choices that I think are foolish, but I am also of the belief that they own themselves, and they are free to make choices that don't harm others or their property.That's super and all, but making the choice to sell people something that will harm them does indeed violate that whole not-harming-others bit. When people are foolishly accepting a bargain to their own detriment, the only way to prevent that harm is for a third party to put a stop to it.
Personal freedom doesn't extend so far as the freedom to scam people. While that infringes on people's "right to choose" to be scammed, I don't think that's a huge loss of freedom.
Another try??There was an old Government Folly thread, and it ended up closed after a discussion of the Anaheim situation got heated.
If scamming is selling something through falsehood then that's fraud. I already that fraud is a violation of someone's rights and the state has a legitimate role in prosecuting fraud. I think I was pretty clear.
On the other hand if someone knows that something has an associated hazard and they choose to use that substance or engage in that activity without endangering others then I think that is their right.
There any number of activities that adults engage in that I don't get. Raw milk happens to be among them, but the same principal applies. If person A knowingly buys raw milk from person B then I see zero need for government force. If person B sells the same raw milk claiming it was pasteurized then person B has committed fraud. I think it's a legitimate use of state force to prosecute fraud.
I don't recall ever arguing that fraud is a right.
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Coming from Amish country, I can definitely tell you that armed FDA raids on raw-milk sellers actually happen. And why does the FDA need to be armed, anyway?
Is allowing want when it has the power to prevent it also government folly?No.
Why not?
Philadelphia woman to be fined $600 a day for feeding hungry children.
There any number of activities that adults engage in that I don't get. Raw milk happens to be among them, but the same principal applies. If person A knowingly buys raw milk from person B then I see zero need for government force. If person B sells the same raw milk claiming it was pasteurized then person B has committed fraud. I think it's a legitimate use of state force to prosecute fraud.So if person A sells raw milk to person B while touting raw milk's health benefits that don't actually exist, then it's still fraudulent and the government should still stop it. It's still snake oil, it's just snake oil that has a chance of being contaminated with listeria. It's not illegal to drink raw milk anywhere, just sell it.
I don't recall ever arguing that fraud is a right.No, you just argued against the government acting to prevent fraud.
So you would be ok with the sale of raw milk if the seller made no comment on health benefits? Because thats still illegal.
Some people make choices for other people (read: parents for their kids) and those choices can be extremely harmful if it's just a free-for-all. Now, you can say that, yes, they will indeed be punished because of existing laws. The problem is, though, that it's always after the fact and after the harm is done. So it should be in everyone's best interest to keep certain harmful products off the market.I also tend to trust people to make better choices for themselves than the state. Some people will make choices that I think are foolish, but I am also of the belief that they own themselves, and they are free to make choices that don't harm others or their property.
Obviously we have opposing views regarding personal freedom.
I see it differently. I think that is a dangerous slippery slope, and I think it violates peoples rights.
For example, current US government regulations criminalize some life saving/extending treatments. Those treatments have very real and serious risks attached to them, but the government takes that choice away from the patient.
Most people agree that treatments that have serious risks attached should be regulated or banned.
I don't see why it's moral or logical to impose criminal sanctions on a terminally ill patient and their doctor for making an informed choice to take a risk that might result in years of extended life. I would like to see this change, but I would also like for people to recognize that by right the choice should be the patient's not the government's.
so you think tobacco should just be outlawed and alcohol too, I assume?
Or Soda? Or la-z-boy recliners?
No, you just argued against the government acting to prevent fraud.Where?
Wrong quote. I never said that.
Some people make choices for other people (read: parents for their kids) and those choices can be extremely harmful if it's just a free-for-all. Now, you can say that, yes, they will indeed be punished because of existing laws. The problem is, though, that it's always after the fact and after the harm is done. So it should be in everyone's best interest to keep certain harmful products off the market.I also tend to trust people to make better choices for themselves than the state. Some people will make choices that I think are foolish, but I am also of the belief that they own themselves, and they are free to make choices that don't harm others or their property.
Obviously we have opposing views regarding personal freedom.
I see it differently. I think that is a dangerous slippery slope, and I think it violates peoples rights.
For example, current US government regulations criminalize some life saving/extending treatments. Those treatments have very real and serious risks attached to them, but the government takes that choice away from the patient.
Most people agree that treatments that have serious risks attached should be regulated or banned.
I don't see why it's moral or logical to impose criminal sanctions on a terminally ill patient and their doctor for making an informed choice to take a risk that might result in years of extended life. I would like to see this change, but I would also like for people to recognize that by right the choice should be the patient's not the government's.
Again, you're talking about consenting adults, which is a whole different ball game than e.g. parents and a child or another situation where it involves an adult who can't give consent.
I'm not sure which treatments you're talking about. If you're talking about medical marijuana, then I fully agree that it should be legalized (heck, ordinary use of marijuana too). It's still a very different thing from e.g. feeding raw, possible contaminated, milk to a child.
Is allowing want when it has the power to prevent it also government folly?No.Why not?
Philadelphia woman to be fined $600 a day for feeding hungry children.
I'm quite enthusiastic about voluntary charity.
I think the idea of the government meeting everyone's wants is absurd.
I think criminalizing private acts of charity is vile, but I also think this is the utterly predictable outcome of government micro management of our lives.
Wrong quote. I never said that.No, you just argued against the government acting to prevent fraud.Where?
Crap! I tried to trim the post and botched it. Sorry!
[deleted]
There any number of activities that adults engage in that I don't get. Raw milk happens to be among them, but the same principal applies. If person A knowingly buys raw milk from person B then I see zero need for government force. If person B sells the same raw milk claiming it was pasteurized then person B has committed fraud. I think it's a legitimate use of state force to prosecute fraud.So if person A sells raw milk to person B while touting raw milk's health benefits that don't actually exist, then it's still fraudulent and the government should still stop it. It's still snake oil, it's just snake oil that has a chance of being contaminated with listeria. It's not illegal to drink raw milk anywhere, just sell it.
I don't recall ever arguing that fraud is a right.No, you just argued against the government acting to prevent fraud.
Philadelphia woman to be fined $600 a day for feeding hungry children.This has a happy-ish ending. The fine has been withdrawn, and she's still doing it. The county is still insisting that the $1000 zoning fee needs to be paid, though, so who knows what happens next.
Let me try this again.
Where did I argue against the government acting to prevent fraud?
Let's give this another try.
Human rights and civil liberty violations as well as corruption, waste, fraud, and secrecy are prime examples of government folly.
Or corporate folly. Or even just plain folly. But I know those don't get under your skin as much. ;-)
I'm quite enthusiastic about voluntary charity.
I think the idea of the government meeting everyone's wants is absurd
One could say the same about the idea of private organizations/charities meeting everyone's wants.
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so you think tobacco should just be outlawed and alcohol too, I assume?Yeah, if there were a good way to do so that wouldn't immediately lead to a black market, I'd call for the banning of tobacco. (Liquor is a bit different, since it can be consumed in moderation.) On the other hand, nobody is addicted to raw milk, and raw milk sellers have a legal outlet for their milk once they pasteurize it.
Or Soda? Or la-z-boy recliners?Soda makes no health claims and isn't inherently dangerous when consumed in moderation. I don't even know what chairs have to do with anything, since they also make no health claims and pose no significant health risks.
Do I need to copy-paste my bit about slippery-slope arguments again? Raw milk is dangerous and can practically be outlawed. My opinion is different for things which are not dangerous or cannot practically be outlawed.
But the question was "if raw-milk sellers made no health promises, you would be ok with it?" you said no, because its potentially unsafe. Tobacco (and has no health benefits, even though claims were once made that it did) is also not safe, but you'd be ok banning it. Ok youre consistent so far. Alcohol is potentially unsafe, but youre ok with it. Soda (and have no health benefits, even though in the past claims were made that it was)is potentially unsafe, but youre ok with it. La-z-boys have no health benefits and are potentially unsafe, yet you are ok with them.
I just find your opinion highly inconsistent. If you wanted government testing for raw-milk to be sold, I say go for it. But they dont that, they just ban it. (actually in most cases they dont, they just make it illegal to transport out of state.) I find this odious, especially in our supposedly "free-market" economy. How do you feel about trampolines? should they be banned? Not only are they advertised as healthy excercise, but they are highly dangerous too.
The ugly thing is, you're both right.
Do you really think an armed raid is an appropriate reaction to the possession of raw milk?No, but I don't think it's a common or widespread problem, and the problem there is the "armed raid" coming from police militarization (which is a serious problem) and not the raw milk part.
How far should the government go to control what adults put in their own bodies in your opinion?How free should people be to sell dangerous scams as food? The second hit for "raw milk" in Google (after Wikipedia) was this, which begins, "There's little mention in the mainstream media these days, of traditional foods having healing properties." So no, I am not sympathetic to people selling snake oil. I don't think you should have THE FREEDOM to scam people, even if the free market will somehow let you. (PS the free market does f~%*all about scams.)Fraud is already a crime. Fraud should be prosecuted even though it rarely is.
I think people should be free to decide what they put in their own bodies, but I think crimes without victims should not be crimes.
I also tend to trust people to make better choices for themselves than the state. Some people will make choices that I think are foolish, but I am also of the belief that they own themselves, and they are free to make choices that don't harm others or their property.
Obviously we have opposing views regarding personal freedom.
So you would be ok with the sale of raw milk if the seller made no comment on health benefits? Because thats still illegal.And it still should be. Taking advantage of people who think that raw milk is a health panacea is still a scam, and on top of that, raw milk just isn't safe. It's fraudulent to sell it as food that's safe for human consumption.
For example, current US government regulations criminalize some life saving/extending treatments. Those treatments have very real and serious risks attached to them, but the government takes that choice away from the patient.You're going to have to be more specific, here, because the regulations on what you can call medical treatment are strict to prevent wildcat experimenting on people or scamming the desperate.
All I can really add is that it's a drug approved in the US for other applications, and it's a drug approved for the application in question in Europe. I have a specific case in mind, but that's all I'm comfortable posting in public.
Specifics aside I still maintain that the final choice should be the patient's not the state's.