From: Alfio Puglisi (puglisi@arcetri.astro.it)
Date: Mon Jul 08 2002 - 05:25:30 MDT
On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Reason wrote:
>Well, um, more to the point: Alfio, your desire for balance (for everyone,
>from context, whether they want it or not) means that the expense of
>enforcing these rules must be supported by everyone.
> You were talking about
>government-enforced labelling standards, right?
I'm talking about having good labels. Right now, it appears that they only
could be government-enforced. If there was another way, that would be
welcome.
> So you're sanctioning the
>government to use the threat of force to take money (taxes) from people who
>don't support the labelling standards that you would like.
I cannot parse this sentence well. What I can make out is that no more
taxes are required for labelling products.
>This seems unethical to me. Why not use your consumer rights and let the
>companies know that you (and others if you want to form a consumer
>association) desire a particular form of labelling? Then let each company
>decide to give it to you or not -- if they don't, you buy from someone who
>does. Free market in action; companies that don't please their customers
>don't have customers. If you're not invested enough to get out there and
>make your preferences known, then why should anyone else do that for you?
For this to work, I would need a *real* free market in action here. There
is no such thing in Europe, and neither in the US. Good, mandatory food
labels are a perfectly workable solution under the current system, and for
a really small cost.
>And it all starts out with something like "...I feel that the rules should
>be shifted...".
Since we aren't in a free market situation, there are much more rules than
needed. Getting rid of most of them (which would be consistent with the
libertarian position, if I get it correctly) is a huge effort. Tilting
them a bit towards accurate information is much simpler.
Alfio
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