From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Thu Jun 28 2001 - 13:06:50 MDT
On Thu, 28 Jun 2001, Peter C. McCluskey wrote (responding to me):
> - there is widespread evidence that people are much more successful than
> anyone else at determining what is in their self interest, and that other
> people who claim to know better are usually maximising some other set of
> interests.
Are they? Can you say that about tobacco products or alcohol?
I'm all for allowing people to pursue these things so as you can
completely eliminate any transfer of costs to the rest of society.
Read, "I" shouldn't have to pay, even indirectly, for your bad habit.
If you choose to use these products *you* should have to pay all
of the costs (presumably up front since society may not be able to collect
them retroactively). Things like seatbelt use was 'paternalistically'
imposed by the Federal government on the people because it saves lives.
Similarly, mandatory automobile insurance, makes the headaches of dealing
with automobile accidents much less. There are lots of examples where
society imposes requirements on people that work to the benefit of everyone
but aren't in an individual's self interest.
> One means of evaluating products is using the reputations of
> the vendors; the therapist has probably used something like this approach
> to determine that sticking to organic foods isn't very risky.
What if the vendors don't know what they are talking about?
Does the average organic produce vendor inform the consumer
that 'natural' vegetables are filled with 'natural' toxins?
You fall into situations where you trust the reputation of
people for reasons that are entirely irrational. Should
the government make Pyramid schemes "legal" because some
people may feel it is in their interest to design and market
them or participate in the early levels? Such schemes
work because people can manufacture 'false' reputations
to suit their needs.
> - the same reasoning could at least as easily be used to rationalize
> opposition to labels that are of genuine value (I gather that mayonnaise
> with EDTA is safer than mayonnaise without EDTA, and that most consumers
> have no clue about this; does that mean I shouldn't be able to discriminate
> in favor of EDTA?).
In the case of EDTA, you don't have a crowd of people out there saying
"Buy mayonnaise without EDTA".
> For instance, the therapist's main motivation might be a concern over
> the harm associated with more centralized control over food that could
> result from people becoming dependent on patented improvements, but not
> think that making that argument directly would be effective due to
> tragedy of the commons type problems.
This trend (larger farms, larger seed companies, etc.) has been occuring
for the better part of the century. Farming can be considered a physically
hard, even dangerous, commonly boring, not particularly profitable profession.
It isn't surprising that it is becoming increasingly centralized as young people
migrate from the farm states to the coasts. The U.S. is returning farmland
to forest as the marginal producers drop out of the game. If the therapist
has a problem with this she should go buy one of the farms and attempt
to make a go of it (raising organic produce if she likes).
> If you can't point to benefits of biotech that are sufficient to persuade
> they average person to buy biotech products, then I'm fairly confident that
> the benefits aren't sufficient for it to matter to the average person.
Most vaccines are now produced by biotech. Insulin has been produced
by biotech for many years. All of the newer cancer treatments are
being produced by biotech. (All medical I know). The fact that
engineering plants proved to be difficult early on is one of the
things that slowed AgBio down and got them into a adversarial
relationship with the greens.
> My guess is that in something like five years, biotech will produce
> something sufficiently valuable to overcome most of the resistence.
Not that of the "naturalists".
> In the meantime, please keep spreading the word about how phony the luddite
> reaction is, but don't try to use that to surpress accurate information.
I'm not trying to suppress accurate information. I'm trying to take
a pragmatic approach to saving the largest number of people possible.
As I said at Extro5, "the blood of billions will be on their hands".
For every day you delay the development of these technologies that
is probably another few hundred thousand irrecoverable humans lost.
If AgBio will eventually provide the vaccines, the vitamins, the
low cost foods to save millions I would argue strongly that anything
that delays its development (by making it "appear" to be a less
desirable investment to the VC or IPO community) is IMMORAL!
If I wanted to suppress information I'd be arguing that people
should be unable to label their products "organic" suggesting
that there are significant benefits over commercial farming
produced, potentially GMO containing, foods. The "benefits" of
"organic" foods are unproven and are probably insignificant if they
exist. For now this debate doesn't matter because the GMO foods
aren't significantly better than organic foods -- *yet*.
There will be a point where that may need to shift -- where
people are made aware that non-GMO foods, like non-EDTA mayonnaise
carry significantly increased risks, primarily for cancer,
relative to GMO foods.
> And a similar calculation would probably show that, if your motives
> were simply to prevent near-term health problems, you should forget about
> the labeling debate too. The fact that you haven't suggests to me that you
> are obscuring your goals.
Peter, you are probably correct in that I've got better near
term things to worry about. However the arguments crystalized
in my head shortly after Extro5 and the news pieces appeared
that started the discussion (though I did consider going down
to the BIO conference with a sign "The Blood of Billions will
be on THEIR hands"), but did manage to restrain myself....
I think I make clear that my position is largely based on
a moral argument that delaying the development of these
technologies *will* harm people. Its not too dissimilar
from the argument about why you aren't "free" to yell
"fire" in a crowded theatre.
We could have a long discussion about the idea that perhaps
the world might be a much better place if we eliminated the
idea that people become "free" to act in their own self-interest
magically appears at the "age of majority".
Instead it would be replaced with the idea that people
attain the rights to make decisions about many different
things only after some kind of demonstration that you
were "informed" enough to make those decisions.
People like Eliezer, for example, would have assumeed large
sets of those rights we reserve for adults much earlier.
For myself it would likely mean I could write my own prescriptions
but couldn't own a gun and probably wouldn't have been
allowed to start a business in Russia a few years ago.
Living in a *more* paternalistic society with finer granularity
could make the world a much happier place.
I'd be perfectly happy if we labeled *all* foods with a complete
chemical chromatograph and mass spectrometer analysis. All the
information anyone could ever want. You get to decide what
foods you can purchase and eat only after you pass the test explaining
the labels... Until then you only get to choose between Federally
Approved Ration Packs #'s 1 thru 5. :-)
I wonder if Cyc knows that people aren't supposed to "eat the dirt"?
Robert
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