From: hal@finney.org
Date: Thu Aug 26 1999 - 13:07:49 MDT
On Tue, 24 Aug 1999, Brian D Williams wrote:
> My bet is that if agribusiness had to label products with (contains
> genetically engineered materials) those products would fail in the
> marketplace......
If you look at the libertarian analysis, you see that you don't have to
go this far; no coercion is necessary. If your prediction is right,
then companies which don't use genetically engineered materials could
label their own products as being free from such, and they would get
increased sales. The first companies to do this would be copied by
others, and soon the absence of such a notification would be a de facto
tip that the food did contain such engineered products.
What actually happens in the real world is that companies fear this
outcome, so they get laws passed preventing other companies from
advertising that their foods don't have genetic engineering in them.
They argue that if such notices were allowed, it would imply to the public
that genetically engineered foods were unsafe, but the FDA has approved
genetic engineering, hence it is safe and such statements cannot be made.
The actual solution, then, is to allow the market to operate and
prevent coercion from being used. In our present environment,
with so many distortions and misallocations caused by government
regulation, it is natural to propose to solve the problem by adding
more regulations (forcing manufacturers to disclose that they are using
genetic engineering). But if you look deeper you will often find that
the problem is caused by existing regulations, and adding new ones is
not the solution.
Hal
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