Re: A typical example of government monopolistic inspection/regulation

From: Alfio Puglisi (puglisi@arcetri.astro.it)
Date: Thu Jul 11 2002 - 03:30:04 MDT


On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Brian Atkins wrote:

>Alfio Puglisi wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Brian Atkins wrote:
>>
>> >Despite these shortcomings, the report said, the U.S. Department of Agriculture,
>> >which oversees food safety, continued to allow plants to ship meat and poultry
>> >for consumption by the public, even though tests repeatedly found some were
>> >laced with either hazardous bacteria or feces.
>> >....
>>
>> This is gross negligence. Europe departments were not better, anyway, as
>> plagues like BSE have shown the world.
>>
>
>Yes it certainly seems to be the pattern that any kind of responsibility
>government takes upon itself, it usually ends up doing a rather poorer
>job at it than the private sector could.

I'm not so sure. The private sector will work this out if there will be
enough consumer interest. Similarly, if enough people were caring, they
would have voted someone into the office for this. A market system would
react much quicker, but here we are talking decades, which is enough time
for a political response.
The fact that almost no one cares about this, makes me wonder if a private
solution will work, given that they would see little customer support.

Alfio



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