Show me that the people selling raw milk are doing so to get out from under the corporate thumb, and testimony that that is why they're doing it, as opposed to being part of a movement that misinforms as to the health risks of their product and sells it under the table to make a quick buck. Albeit perhaps just to get by in these economic times.I can easily believe that. Often you'll only get one milk distributor in an area and you either need to take what they'll pay you or cough up for your own FDA approved refinery.
I can think of two good reasons for raw milk. It tastes really good and I want some. Why would you deny me that? Im not forcing you or anyone else to drink it, after all.Because its easier to ban the sale than to stop you from giving it to your kid, who isn't able to weigh the delicious taste against the risk.
Does that suggest that you agree with banning it?
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I'd rather ban children, myself.
But that's harder to enforce.
You rail against gov't bureaucracies, like FDA and EPA.
People ask you why do you think gov't is so bad.
You say "Hiroshima, Stalin"!!!!!
I'll ask again: Why do you rail against the FDA? What has the FDA that is bad that isn't, in fact, exacerbated by its dissolution?
Did I miss the part where I said we had to dissolve the FDA? Because I don't remember that, and I'm not drinking right now.
I think the FDA exceeds its constitutional authority. I think the FDA does a lot of things poorly. I think it's insipid for the FDA to mandate that a terminally ill patient must die rather than get a treatment that they disagree with.
I think the EPA is a wretched bureaucratic train wreck. That's not the same as saying that the federal government has no authority or right to protect property and people against pollution.
You seem to be opposed to an argument that I'm not making.
I'd rather ban children, myself.
But that's harder to enforce.
And I though I was bitter....
I merely asked questions. You're the one presuming things.
And I though I was bitter....I'd rather ban children, myself.
But that's harder to enforce.
I used to have an email signature that read something to the effect of supporting abortion until the first day of kindergarten.
If you want to have the abortion brawl please start your own thread for it.
I don't, I was just elaborating.
And attempting to showcase my pitch black sense of humor.
The issue with raw milk in the US and Canada is that pasturization has reduced food illness and tuberculosis. The former is arguably personal choice, until you give it to your kids or an adult without informed consent. The later is most assuredly not. The rules and consumer prefrence came about in the 1920s and have had a massive beneficial impact on public health.
The opposing arguments are quackery unsupported by science. It's possible to produce unpasturized milk safely, but at least in the US it's been well established that outside of a tiny number of farmers it's not likely. Hard cheeses from raw milk are fine, but soft cheeses have to be aged long enough to kill the pathogens.
What those stories don't say is that the FDA orderrs milk destroyed when it fails tests for e. Coli, tuburculosis, burcerella, listeria or other pathogens until the farmer can proove he's cleaned up his product.
Raw milk in continental europe is a different story because their food safty regulations and enforcement are much more stringent and effective and farmers and processors are less likely to lie and cheat the rules to make a buck.
About soft cheeses : it's not aging them that make them safe. They are, because their fabrication process includes seeding them with a big lot of non-pathogenic, friendly germs (at least in France). Pathogenic germs can't get a foothold and multiply in such a competitive environment.
Over here, most of the cases of food poisoning cases come from industrial, sterilized cheese who gets somehow contaminated. Old fashioned, already saturated cheese are in fact safer.
I would have no problem with raw milk being tightly regulated. Competition is a good thing, after all.
Bolded part from me. this is where I think we differ. If it was really about the disease, then monitor the raw milk, like they apparently do in Europe. Straight out banning the sale is ludicrous, IMO, and seems to only further the interests of larger dairies while pushing out smaller boutique dairies that either have to fill a niche market (like selling raw milk) or be absorbed into the larger dairies to survive.We disagree about using government force to protect people from themselves or some other general social "good".You haven't yet addressed the contradiction in your arguments, though, where you espouse the right of people to do anything they want as long as it doesn't harm anyone, but seem to go back and forth over whether it's right to provide people with the means to harm themselves. To use raw milk as an example, nobody is making it illegal to drink, just to sell it as food. Sellingtainted raw milk as food does harm people: it gives them listeriosis or tuberculosis. What's the problem with that ban?
If I sell an addictive drug to an addict, aren't I harming them? If I put a gun in the hands of a depressed person, aren't I harming them? If I take advantage of someone's irrational action, aren't I harming them?
Lol, bt, you are cracking me up with this one. Your zeal for minarchy paints the government in such a negative light that if you really want people to buy into your last statement here, you should open a thread which looks at the good things the government does. Otherwise I can can't blame meatrace for his skepticism, although he could certainly be more diplomatic about it.
I think that you make a very valid point, and I'm sure that we agree that fascism and mercantilism are rotten things, but I have trouble seeing how corporations can be primarily blamed for the horrors in Stalin's Russia, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Mao's China or Hiroshima and Nagasaki for that matter.Without going into the whole "fascism = corporatism" thing...
Neither has the FDA or the EPA, so let's tone it down a bit and compare apples and apples.
*sigh*
I never said or suggested that.
I said I believe governments are a greater threat than corporations.
The portion of my quote that you omitted seems quite clear.
Did anyone else think I was suggesting some kind of equivalence between Hiroshima and the FDA?
I also did not say that corporations do nothing but good, and government does nothing but evil.
Is that more clear?
100 posts in less than 24 hours?!?
It's alive!!!!
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You need me to take anyone out to Razor Jenny yet, Comrade Thorn?
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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...
Can I give my kid marijuana?
Yes, government sometimes does foolish things. The drug war, as it has been prosecuted, is a boondoggle. Legalize it! I'm down!
Now let's not tear down the government because it does something wrong, let's work to change the things that are wrong about it and keep the things that are right about it.
No.
1, 2, 3, 4--Workers revolution is what we're for!
5, 6, 7, 8--Forward to a workers state!
Vive le Galt!
I'M DOING MY CIVIC DUTY ON THIS MESSAGEBOARD FOR ROLEPLAYING GAMERS
Hee hee!
I used to have an email signature that read something to the effect of supporting abortion until the first day of kindergarten.And I though I was bitter....I'd rather ban children, myself.
But that's harder to enforce.
Hee hee!
I worked at a warehouse once where I had to listen to a lot of Howard Stern. I think in that year and a half, the only thing he said that made me laugh out loud was during the debate on third-trimester abortions that he had no problems with abortions up to the second grade.
Hee hee!
I don't, I was just elaborating.
And attempting to showcase my pitch black sense of humor.
Woops.
About soft cheeses : it's not aging them that make them safe. They are, because their fabrication process includes seeding them with a big lot of non-pathogenic, friendly germs (at least in France). Pathogenic germs can't get a foothold and multiply in such a competitive environment.
Over here, most of the cases of food poisoning cases come from industrial, sterilized cheese who gets somehow contaminated. Old fashioned, already saturated cheese are in fact safer.
Comrade le Couard,
Please stop reinforcing chauvinist American stereotypes of Frenchmen.
About soft cheeses : it's not aging them that make them safe. They are, because their fabrication process includes seeding them with a big lot of non-pathogenic, friendly germs (at least in France). Pathogenic germs can't get a foothold and multiply in such a competitive environment.
Over here, most of the cases of food poisoning cases come from industrial, sterilized cheese who gets somehow contaminated. Old fashioned, already saturated cheese are in fact safer.
Comrade le Couard,
Please stop reinforcing chauvinist American stereotypes of Frenchmen.
Hoooo, I so looove useless trivia about cheese !
Of course, aging them also let our friendly germs to fully bloom. Better for taste. And it's only raw COW milk than can be harmful. Goats are our best friends.
Hee hee! You cheese-eating...
How have you been? I haven't seen you in forever. Well, I saw you once last week.
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I've been reading tons about your 1789, btw. Great stuff, I love it. Way cooler than 1776. But, all these books end with the downfall of Robespierre. :(
I am reading Lefebvre's now and that goes up to 1799 at least, but what do socialist Frenchmen recommend as the best book on Napoleon?
Robespierre is what I'm going to name the next cat I get.
A lot of them had real bad-ass names.
Maximilien Robespierre.
Anarcharsis Cloots.
Louis-Antonie de Saint-Just.
Herault de Sechelles.
Lazare Carnot.
There's a guy around here that calls himself Robespierre, but he never says Vive le Galt! so I stopped following his posts.
Robespierre is what I'm going to name the next cat I get."Be careful what you name a thing."
Robespierre, it seems, was the least bloodthirsty guy on the Committe of Public Safety. He had been opposed to the execution of the king, opposed to the Girondins' declaration of revolutionary war, was an opponent of the deChristianizers (had a lot of them executed, as a matter of fact, although that hardly bolsters my argument) and had to be pressured by the other committee members into executing the Dantonists.
It also seems that he was a bit of a prude.
Cloots.
That's another awesome pet name.
Pets should always be named after mythological characters or historical badasses.
I found a stray black cat when I was living with this Jewish dude. He hated his middle name. So, to annoy him, I named the cat Hillel P. Newton.
I have been a troll for a while.
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How about getting a litter of kittens and naming them: Groucho, Chico, Zeppo, and Karl?
Replace Zeppo with Harpo and it's on!
I knew a girl in high school who was pregnant named Marx. I tried to convince her, but no go.
Robespierre is what I'm going to name the next cat I get."Be careful what you name a thing."Robespierre, it seems, was the least bloodthirsty guy on the Committe of Public Safety. He had been opposed to the execution of the king, opposed to the Girondins' declaration of revolutionary war, was an opponent of the deChristianizers (had a lot of them executed, as a matter of fact, although that hardly bolsters my argument) and had to be pressured by the other committee members into executing the Dantonists.
It also seems that he was a bit of a prude.
You probably know more about the revolutionaries than I do, but Robespierre always reminds me a bit of the Soviet bureaucracy. I know a guy on another board who visited in the late Sixties (He's a linguist who was studying Russian at the time.) and whenever he mentions it he tells us how incredibly prudish the average Party official was. They hated rock & roll, sexual freedom, and all the rest just as much as the fundamentalists he knew in America did.
Granted, she was on the fringe and her ideas weren't exactly commonplace among the Bolsheviks. She had a big debate with Lenin early after the revolution. The Bolsheviks did declare, however, that sexual matters were no business of the state as long as they were consensual, legalized abortion, made divorce easier, the whole nine yards. This didn't last long after Stalin came to power, though.
Trotsky was definitely a fan of avant-garde art, and the original Cultural Minister was Anatoly Lunacharsky who did much to inspire the outpouring of avant-garde that came out of the early Soviet Union (Mayakovsky in poetry, bunch of painters, Eisenstein in film, ballet, etc., etc). This, too, didn't last long under Stalin.
There's an absolutely awesome quote from Lenin on Beethoven. Let me see if I can find it...
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In regards to the Apassionata:
"I can’t listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things, and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.”
Which isn't exactly how I remember reading it in Greil Marcus, the rock critic, but whatevs.
It turns out part of this quote is on the New York subway:
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Replace Zeppo with Harpo and it's on!
I knew a girl in high school who was pregnant named Marx. I tried to convince her, but no go.
No love for Richard?
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Only a fistful of hate.
No love for Richard?
Although, if I was otherwise inclined, I guess I could see the attraction.
Goblins do it in the street!
You ever notice now Richard Marx and Kenny Loggins are never in the same place at the same time?
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Granted, she was on the fringe and her ideas weren't exactly commonplace among the Bolsheviks. She had a big debate with Lenin early after the revolution. The Bolsheviks did declare, however, that sexual matters were no business of the state as long as they were consensual, legalized abortion, made divorce easier, the whole nine yards. This didn't last long after Stalin came to power, though.
Trotsky was definitely a fan of avant-garde art, and the original Cultural Minister was Anatoly Lunacharsky who did much to inspire the outpouring of avant-garde that came out of the early Soviet Union (Mayakovsky in poetry, bunch of painters, Eisenstein in film, ballet, etc., etc). This, too, didn't last long under Stalin.
There's an absolutely awesome quote from Lenin on Beethoven. Let me see if I can find it...
My favorite is Sergei Prokofiev. He fled Russia after the revolution and took up in the US. He missed it though, and as time went by, associates in the Soviet Union convinced him to come back. He returned in 1936, right as Stalin was warming up.
After laboring under the censors for almost 20 years, patiently waiting for the day that Stalin would die and maybe he could write the music he wanted to, Stalin and Prokofiev died on the same day in 1953.
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The Bolsheviks did declare, however, that sexual matters were no business of the state as long as they were consensual, legalized abortion, made divorce easier, the whole nine yards. This didn't last long after Stalin came to power, though.
Yeah. I suspect there's something about authoritarianism that eventually requires intense prudishness. It's hard to demand unquestioning obedience and simultaneously support questioning and even overthrowing cultural strictures.
More awesome French Revolutionary names:
Filippo Buonarotti
Gracchus Babeuf
Phillippe Egalite (royalty, but, still, cool name)
Choderlos de Laclos (revolutionary general AND wrote Dangerous Liaisons!)
and, of course...
me.
He missed it though, and as time went by, associates in the Soviet Union convinced him to come back. He returned in 1936, right as Stalin was warming up.
With friends like that...
The Bolsheviks did declare, however, that sexual matters were no business of the state as long as they were consensual, legalized abortion, made divorce easier, the whole nine yards. This didn't last long after Stalin came to power, though.Yeah. I suspect there's something about authoritarianism that eventually requires intense prudishness. It's hard to demand unquestioning obedience and simultaneously support questioning and even overthrowing cultural strictures.
I think Camille Paglia, among others, has argued that.
Trotsky had a different argument. It's been a while since I read it, but, rest assured it had a lot to do with the Stalinists's counterrevolutionary renunciation of, you got it, international proletarian socialist revolution.
I'll have to dig out my copy of The Revolution Betrayed.
Ah, it feels so nice to pollute Comrade Thorn's libertarian thread with my communist bullshiznit while he's sleeping. Hee hee!
But I know he loves me.
He had been opposed to the execution of the king,
Woops. Getting confused. This is untrue. He was an early opponent of the death penalty. But like Walter Sobchak re: pacifism and Vietnam, not during the Reign of Terror, of course.