Re: NEWS: Europe tightens GM labelling rules

From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Fri Jul 05 2002 - 10:12:46 MDT


I don't see how proponents of the free market can oppose labeling. It
seems that open markets require informed consumers who know exactly what
they are buying. Like open source, it lets the customer verify for
themselves what they are getting. Like disclosure requirements in the
stock market, it requires complete openness about what is going on. I
don't see why we would want to use secrecy and misdirection to trick
people into buying something they don't want. It seems dishonest and
fraudulent to me to deliberately hide information from a buyer because
one knows that they would turn down a deal if they knew the truth.

On Thursday, July 4, 2002, at 05:10 pm, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> Hmmm... should our choice to allow "individual freedom" outweigh
> our desire to promote "rational thought"? We know that "irrational
> thought" can cause all kinds of problems (its presumably unextropic
> since it probably leads to chaos much more often than greater order).

Dictatorships are not a good answer to enforce rational thought. A free
society means people are free to make bad choices. As soon as you
enforce good choices on people against their will for their own good,
you no longer have a free society. You can argue all you want that it
would be better to force people to do what you want them to do, but that
seems to run counter to the principles of freedom.

> How about requiring that allowing people to make their own decision
> requires that they must make an *informed* decision?

This is too close to Jim Crow laws. People can only vote if they are
smart enough to vote correctly. Those with opposing or unpopular
viewpoints aren't allowed to vote. That doesn't sound like a good
scheme to me.

> So Harvey, how do you explain recursion to the average person on the
> in your local grocery store?

Easier than I can explain why they should be forced to ingest substances
into their body against their will because the big corporations have a
more rational say over their bodies than they do.

Technotranscendence wrote,
> The real problem here is requiring food labels is coercive. Eliminate
> that. If consumers insist on knowing what's in the food, then, chances
> are, they will provided with such information. However, having the
> government call the tune is not freedom in action. Nor, given what we
> know about politics and history, is it rational.

I don't see forcing corporations to tell the truth about their products
as being coercive. It seems that hiding the truth or misleading the
customer into making choices they don't want is the coercive action.

--
Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com>
Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>


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