His point about how ridiculously unfair the current system can be is well taken, and it's very frustrating. But, the paternalistic state exists because people cry out for it. There are efforts to ban completely ridiculous offenses, like your pants (url, http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/17/baggy.pants.ap/index.html )"There should be a law preventing that." When it comes to things like medicine, the current overbearing system seems necessary because people at large seem nearly incapable of rejecting obviously false medical treatments ("smart" water, echinacea, magnet therapy, colon cleansing, Kinoki foot pads).
And the other problem... Having faith that people will do "the right thing?" People often don't, especially when it comes to even slightly complex things. Homeopathic remedies are a massive industry, but they've been definitively shown over and over to have no discernible effect. Religious cults still flourish in every civilized nation, despite their policy of taking everything from their members and leaving them as broken, one-dimensional caricatures. Chemical and drug abuse (as opposed to recreational use) is rampant, and our laws cannot differentiate between the two. People even deny proven science because they don't like the implications, stifling scientific progress that could help sick and dying people.
It's not a new dilemma, but it's getting more complex and urgent as our population grows. On the one hand, some people make the world better. On the other? Some people make it worse, sometimes simply through their ignorance. Distinguishing between them and giving the helpers the latitude to improve without giving the destructive forces latitude to destroy is the fundamental dilemma of any society.
I don't expect people to do the 'right thing.' For starters, because we don't know what the 'right thing' is.
Look at it this way: 99% of everything men have ever know has been wrong. All scientific theories (except the current ones) have been proven wrong. And, at every point in history, men who thought the current theories were wrong were labeled heretics or morons. There were men who wouldn't let themselves be 'bled' 200 years ago and men who won't undergo chemo today. And that is their choice.
I think a lot of people make stupid choices, but if it only harms themselves, I say let them. Hell, I would have thought some of Bill Gates' decisions early in Microsoft's history were wrong, but that goes to show what I know.
Every person should be allowed to make their own decisions (and live with the consequences of thereof).
If someone believes in homeopathy or the new age panacea du jour over real medicine, let them. If they die because they made the wrong choice, it's a shame, but at least they died free men.
But many of these choices lead to things which are destructive to others. For example, lots of people are resisting vaccination despite overwhelming scientific evidence that there is no link between autism and vaccination. These people let their children rely on the herd immunity of the first world.
If everyone followed this strategy, many people would die as a consequence of even a relatively small segment of the population's choice. At some point, your freedom ends and another's begins. Drawing that line is really hard, especially when some people are frantically trying to give it up and others are frantically taking it for personal gain.
Whereas other people examine the studies and testimonies and see overwhelming evidence that there is a link.
This is the problem with a government one size fits all system. There isn't necessarily one right answer. And in a system like ours where what government does is influenced most by big pharmaceutical agriculture corporations who have a business interest in sick people and sick animals, well you're likely not to get the right answer at all.
Many vaccines sadly aren't 100% effective. The reason they work so well is because if _everyone_ is vaccinated the immunities of the group reduce exposure to the group, a kind of self-reinforcement.
And the more a vaccinated person is exposed to a disease, the more permutations of that disease get thrown at the vaccinated population. If one takes, then we have the whole problem of the disease all over again. One consequence of the short life of bacteria and the mutation of viruses is that they're basically brute-forcing our immunities of every population they're in contact with.
This is why it's _so important_ that people follow vaccination programs. Eventually we'll have to deal with new diseases, but if we aggressively and correctly vaccinate, we can stave off that day for a lot longer than if we half-ass it.
Sounds good in theory. In practice, there have been disease outbreaks in communities with 100% vaccination rates against that disease. Most vaccines don't even cover all the known strains, forget the new mutations.
IMO, vaccination is no replacement for promoting a strong natural immunity and preventative medicine. Both of which are virtually thrown out the window in modern medicine.
I'm for any medicine that can be proven to work through the techniques espoused by modern medical science. If you can prove it works in a placebo-controlled double-(or dare-i-dream-triple?)-blind study, then I'm all for it.
> If they die because they made the wrong choice, it's a shame, but at least they died free men
I agree with you if you are talking about adults. But what about their children? Should a child die just because their parents decided that a prayer would cure them?
Most regulations aren't there to protect what people do to themselves, but to limit what they can do to others.
A responsible child can probably carry a gun to school, but do you trust all children?
The author would probably kill his cattle in a humane way, but can we count on everyone to do so?
> A responsible child can probably carry a gun to school, but do you trust all children?
Less than 50 years ago, they carried their rifles to school on the bus every day, and kept them in their lockers. They also took gun safety courses in school. I don't find it at all surprising that kids are less responsible with guns now: when I work with kids, I find they live up (or down) to the level of your expectations.
> The author would probably kill his cattle in a humane way, but can we count on everyone to do so?
From everything I've seen, many/most farms still don't, so the USDA is more of a nuisance for those that want to do it right, than a way to force the bad ones to improve. The government is made up of people, too: you can't just sprinkle farms with the magic pixie dust of "government regulation" and have everything magically work out.
Yes, exactly. Too many people think society should be designed exclusively for them. They don't realize that what's good for them is not necessarily good for the world.
That works both ways. I might find its ok to drive drunk and I might not want to keep my meat packing plant up to "code" but I might object to you build a hazardous waste next to my house. When it comes down to it a lot of people taking minor risks is why 10’s of thousands of people are murdered every year in 100% preventable car “accidents”.
The point of regulation is collectively managing risk. Driving with old tires might seem a reasonable thing to do but your risking other people’s lives. And the average farmer knows nothing about the overall risks of animal to human disease mutation, but people still pays the price every time such incompetence creates a new disease strain.
PS: Farming is one of the most polluting industries in the world but the lack of smoke stacks seems to give people the warm fuzziest.
His argument has good points, but would be a lot more convincing if presented in a less vitriolic tone. As Sgt. Friday would say "Just the facts, ma'am."
This particular situation sounds like overkill, but there are reasons we have laws concerning who can produce and sell food, and how homes must be constructed to basic safety standards. And yes, if you sell products to consumers you have to pay sales taxes.
I don't belive that products should necessarily be held to any standard. Consumers should be informed about the safety of their product (known unsafe, unknown, certified safe, etc) and be allowed to make their own decisions.
Frankly, I think that I'm better at evaluating how much risk is acceptable to me than some government bureaucrat in Washington.
If a contractor offers to sell me a 800 square foot house, and I agree to buy it (knowing full well that it hasn't been certified and is smaller than legally required), how is that anyone's business but my own? I should be allowed to make my own decisions and live with the consequences of my own actions.
>Frankly, I think that I'm better at evaluating how much risk is acceptable to me than some government bureaucrat in Washington.
Then you would love living in China. I guess going to a restaurant or grocery store where much of the food contains various poisons wouldn't bother you, since you're able to tell the difference.
I was going to say: Relaxing the food regulations isn't some kind of brilliant new idea. It's been tried before, and in some countries it's still being tried. If the Chinese cat food stories from last year aren't scary enough for you, try reading Sinclair's The Jungle... or the slaughterhouse chapter of Fast Food Nation.
So, food safety is so important that the only way to assure it is to leave it up to a gigantic monopoly with no responsibility or accountability or incentive to pursue any goal other than it's own growth?
People act as if just saying that something must be done well is tantamount to agreeing that the government should do it -- but when I look at the Fed's record, I have to argue that if something is really important to you, you should do everything in your power to keep the government as far away as possible.
Sure, but you do realize that "The Jungle" was a deliberate load of muckraking bull? The whole book was about poor working conditions in American factories and to drive the point home, Sinclair described a guy falling into the lard vats and getting eaten. There was no truth to the health claims but the concept of eating people freaked out European importers so much that the US was forced to create FDA (Or its predecessor, I don't remember precisely.) The first reports found no evidence of Sinclair's claims.
The ironic thing is that Sinclair was hoping to spark a socialist revolution and improve the lives of the slaughterhouse workers. What happened was that the inspection agencies added to cost to the production process and actually lowered the standard of living for the workers.
There was no single event that led to the creation of the FDA as we know it, but there was an interesting string of medical disasters during the first half of the 20th century that caused the scope of the laws and agency to creep:
For medicine, the incentives are all wrong for laissez-faire to prevent disaster. If you create a compound that you think will be useful in some way, it only takes a few tests to convince yourself and others that it's worth using. If it works safely in the general population, you're a hero and a millionaire; if you waste time on additional testing, your competition will beat you; and if your testing turns up some ambiguous data, you're stuck with the dilemma of whether to go forward with a product that has risks that the benefits may or may not outweigh. I've worked on medical devices; this last situation comes up constantly. Without detailed specifications that put the burden on the producers to prove safety and efficacy, what the producer thinks is due diligence is generally woefully inadequate.
(No comment on the state of agriculture back then, but these days the line between food and drug is getting blurry.)
A work of fiction that is nonetheless far more credible than this sentence:
There was no truth to the health claims...
From the Wikipedia entry on The Jungle:
After much persuasion from Sinclair as to the seriousness of the situation, Roosevelt agreed to send two men to investigate Sinclair's claims. The men the president chose, Charles P. Neill and James B. Reynolds, had both done investigative work for Roosevelt before, and were thought trustworthy...
Even though the meat packers had forewarning and time to clean up, the conditions Neill and Reynolds observed were described as "revolting;" the only claim left unsubstantiated by the report was the sensational claim that workers who had fallen into the giant lard vats were left and sold as lard.
Obviously, Wikipedia isn't an unimpeachable source. But it's better than one guy's unsourced opinion.
I note for the record that, confronted with a historical example from last year, a contemporary work of nonfiction (Fast Food Nation), and a work of muckraking fiction from 1906, we've now become curiously focused on debunking a single famous legend from the 1906 work. Because, of course, if Sinclair stretched a fact here and there out of revolutionary fervor, adulterated cat food must be perfectly good for cats.
I don't know anything about "Fast Food Nation." I do know a little about Upton Sinclair. I can only argue with what I know.
Edit: You are right, it does seem that Wikipedia with some of my claims, but backs up the my points about the real focus and Sinclair's novel and it's real impact.
> If a contractor offers to sell me a 800 square foot house, and I agree to buy it (knowing full well that it hasn't been certified and is smaller than legally required)
Because knowing 'full well' implies you knew what questions to ask. And requiring everyone to know all the questions they need to ask in every transaction is not only unreasonable but wasteful.
How many things need to be "fully" disclosed so that I can make an informed decision when buying milk? The whole purpose of regulation is to have a group of people who are asking those questions for us.
I think that private certification agencies (think consumer reports on steroids) could take the place of regulations.
I could either buy a gallon of milk that is certified by an agency I trust for a little more, or pay less (and ask my own questions) for an uncertified gallon.
And if a manufacturer chose not to disclose all relevant information, then I can choose not buy their product (and certification agencies will not certify it)
Not to mention that it isn't in any firm's economic interest to provide a patently unsafe product.
the problem is that no milk will be uncertified. There will be certain certifiers that will certify anything, and it will be extremely difficult for a buyer to tell the difference.
Look at something like eggs. People pay more for eggs because they are "free range", but free range just means that they have access to the range, not that they are capable of using that access.
And it is in firms interest to provide a patently unsafe product as long as not enough people are lost due to the unsafe product to counteract the savings.
without regulation it would be much harder to determine the cause of the problem.
If I am exposed to e-coli due to lettuce or spinach (each certified by a different agency), I won't know. I'll assume it was from my overeasy eggs or rare beef, or because the cook doesn't wash his hands. the farmer could go on selling tainted vegetables for quite a long time before the cause is found.
And people will choose to buy products verified by certifiers they trust. At least then you have a choice.
Consumer Reports has a far better record than the FDA.
Of course, as you state, there would be disreputable certifying agencies too but I could avoid them and only use long-running agencies with a good reputation.
> Consumer Reports has a far better record than the FDA.
Maybe that's because Consumer Reports has the benefit of leveraging all the work already done by the FDA. Let me be clear, though, you may be right that privatizing such things could work. It's just that your evidence isn't necessarily compelling.
I'm familiar with Salatin's writing (and practices), and I think his argument would be that if you have face-to-face transactions with the producer (Salatin won't ship his meat, for example--you must come to the farm to pick it up), you don't need a certifier because you are holding the producer accountable, and you can require that his processes are transparent.
Certainly you can argue that someone should do this for you, but Salatin is trying to shift the paradigm of how we produce and consume food.
>the problem is that no milk will be uncertified. There will be certain certifiers that will certify anything, and it will be extremely difficult for a buyer to tell the difference.
Interestingly enough, there is a substantial group of people that WANT to buy "uncertified" milk raw, straight from the cow. This is, unfortunately, illegal.
In Wisconsin there was a bit of a brouhaha over the practice of "time-sharing" dairy cows. You see, while it's illegal to sell unprocessed milk, the owner of a cow is permitted to drink the raw milk.
I understand the risks of raw milk and want it.
I also understand why we have it regulated. I would like to relax the regulation to allow me to get raw milk in some situations. but I don't want BigCo. selling it. BigCo. can't be trusted.
The 900 square foot restriction seemed pretty odd, but I have a feeling it is designed to prevent trailer parks from moving in. If you have land in the country, that is the standard nightmare scenario.
I lived out in the country for a while and we had a few trailers near us. That's not a problem, and in appalachia, it's sometimes all the better people can do. The problem is trailer parks, which are sometimes okay, but sometimes are just rural ghettos, with crime and crack and meth and general bad behavior pouring out.
You have a few strategies to "keep up the neighborhood". The upper class strategy is to price out the poor people. The middle class strategy is zoning, which amounts to discrimination of various kinds. The results are pretty much the same. The fact the rich people get accidentally what middle class people have to get by fiat causes political confusion.
There's no such thing as buying a plot of land free and clear, at least in the US. You're buying a set of rights, not the land itself. What those rights are is a function of local, state, and federal laws, the contract, and any restrictions put on the land previously.
That said, you can always build a barn and then put the trailer in the barn.
You're also not buying, you're leasing your land from the government. If you fail to pay your lease fees, the government will evict you and lease the land to someone else.
Yes they call it "taxes and zoning rules" but in practice it simply operates as a landlord charging rent and telling the tenant what they are and are not allowed to do with the landlord's property. If it walks like a duck...
Sure, if you don't mind the smell from the nuclear-powered mercury reclamation plant that I'm putting up next door.
Sorry about the noise, BTW, but the lot on the other side of yours is the perfect location for our CEO's private helipad.
(Incidentally, if you were really asking me about a shed, and not merely trying to bait us onto some slippery slope to anarchy... I rather like small cottages and would like to put one up myself. So I'd be pretty sympathetic at your zoning board meeting.
Ultimately, I'm guessing that zoning boards exist only because people were historically unwilling to just ask their neighbors first and abide by their preferences. And zoning boards can still be overridden if enough of your neighbors agree. It's called a "variance".)
maybe you could do that in the US, where the threat of lawsuits might keep people honest. but i wouldn't risk it.
seems like the problem this essay is pointing out is that the laws aren't fine-grained enough to distinguish between industrial farms and mom-and-pops. But probably, if there WERE such a distinction and mom-and-pops got off easy, corporate agriculture would bend over backwards to meet the technical definition. if the law said people can sell uncertified stuff on the farm premises, there'd be a little hen house in the back of every shoprite (or whatever), just like with the suv fuel efficiency restrictions. perhaps one way around that, though, is that since all corporations are (if anything) corporations, the law could single out food that's been handled by employees of registered corporations for special treatment. but who knows, they'd probably find a way around that too.
I think you've made the critical argument: the law is a blunt instrument, because there are people who will abuse the intricacies of anything less.
This entire comment thread fascinates me, because it seems to consist of repeated jabs at "absurd" laws by cranky libertarians (or anarchists), followed by parries by people who can see reasonable arguments for said laws. Rarely does the debate rise to the level where it is acknowledged that sometimes good laws have unintended absurd consequences, and that just because a law prevents you from doing something you want to do, doesn't mean that the law is invalid (or an inappropriate intrusion of government into daily life).
It is more than the law is a blunt instrument. When it comes to food laws it is a blunt instrument whose only efficacious purpose is to raise the barrier to entry so high that small operators with truly clean and environmentally sound food can't compete (if they are even legal to begin with).
People would buy "known unsafe" products. They would presumably be cheaper, and some people would risk it. When the product is something like beef, very bad things would happen, and it would have potential to impact the rest of the community.
Very bad things happen when you make regulations. The cost of all goods is higher because they all must comply. That means that there are people who can't afford the cost of the regulated goods who could eat more if the goods were available which met a lower regulatory threshold which was still acceptable to them.
Why do you assume that the current regulatory tradeoff between safety and cost is the right one for everyone?
Because the alternative leads to exploitation - both of the consumer and the worker.
Companies will cut costs any legal way they can. If you make it legal for them to be unsafe, they will be. The counter argument are market forces, but I don't think that works here. It assumes a completely rational consumer who understands the risk they are taking. We're not that rational, and generally don't understand the risks.
We didn't always have safety regulations. Bad things happened.
Did you ever buy vegetables from a roadside stand or a neighbor's tomatoes? Did you rely on the existence of a government agency to ensure that they were safe to eat?
I can buy $5/lb tomatoes at Whole Foods or $2/lb tomatoes at Stop & Shop. Apparently Whole Foods perceives a market for food which isn't the lowest price possible. People will differentiate based on quality just as they do for safety. They don't need to be completely rational - they need to be minimally rational.
The point of the original article is that regulations lead to more problems - they are not just a response to, but also encourage the centralization of factory food production just like you read about in Fast Food Nation.
Unreasonable regulations are a problem, yes. But there is a wide gulf between "let's ammend our regulations to be more reasonable" and "let's throw our regulations out entirely."
Perhaps. But the problem is that once reasonable regulations exist, they inevitably become unreasonable. No bureaucrat or agency wants to be the one who said no to the incremental regulation which would save just one more child despite the many who might benefit from doing nothing.
But the problem is that once reasonable regulations exist, they inevitably become unreasonable.
Only if your idea of effective political action is to start out arguing for a reasonable exception to a rule that unjustly prevents small-scale home butchering and end up thunderously denouncing the entire concept of "government".
Here's a simple rule that might help (aimed not so much at you, but at the author of the original article): Do not bring the word "firearms" -- to say nothing of an actual firearm -- into a conversation about the regulatory status of a small farm stand. Avoiding generic rants about "taxation" would also be good. Focus, people, focus!
I've seen a similar argument. If an employee agrees to work for less than a statutory minimum wage, does it matter? Yes, because it makes it harder for anyone else to get a better income.
If you'd like to learn more about the issues in this essay, I recommend The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Pollan spends a good chunk of the book using Salatin's Polyface Farm as an example of sustainable agriculture.
Disclaimer: I've just joined the Arlington buyer's club for Polyface Farm and have been very happy with their meat and eggs.
The problem, my friends, is the legislators. More spefically, lawyers as legislators. Think about that (in the context of many of the other good points here), and realize that there is an inherent conflict of interest having members of a self-regulating professional class (lawyers and the Bar) writing the very laws that only they can administer.
Never vote for any lawyer running for any legislative body.
The author of this paper (Joe Salatin) runs Polyface farms. Recently, they've been in the news for helping Chipotle figure out how to source local pork products for all of their stores. If you live in the Northeast, you can eat some of his pork by going there.
Great submission. As the grandson of a lifeling farmer, I have one thing to say to America: we better do a much better job of protecting the ones who out food on our tables because right now we aren't.
If you found this interesting I would highly suggest his recently released book by the same name. It goes into depth explaining a lot of things more.
A big point in his book that is getting missed here is this: our food regulation system doesn't really make us safer, it just gives us the feeling and appearance of that. What farmers like Salatin offer is true transparency and food safety, the kind government regulated food will never be able to provide. He just wants to be free to provide truly health building food.
The circled U is a trademark of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America which is used to signify their certification of a product as being kosher.
It certainly is, but I don't think that has anything to do with the question, which was regarding the section of the linked article titled "Opting Out of the System", where the author writes "I can't even use the 'U' word" without giving much of a hint as to what word he means.
He refers to an "O" word later which is pretty clearly "organic", which actually reminds me of what I dislike about this essay: Sure, it would be great if our Howard Roark-style farmer could grow his own organic crop and slap an "organic" label on it to sell it to his handful of fans without having to deal with the Organic Trade Association, but that's not so good for me, as a customer buying food at the local supermarket. If just anyone could label their food "organic", then what are the odds that word would ever actually mean anything?
Likewise, I think it's all well and good that this clearly intelligent and responsible person should build a composting toilet, but if there were _no_ standards, what would stop a new neighbor from moving in next to me and installing, say, a toilet that dumps feces in a pile in the back yard?
> If just anyone could label their food "organic", then what are the odds that word would ever actually mean anything?
Let's recast this. How you like to pay a third party an ongoing annual royalty for the privilege of calling your own software open source? We're smart enough to get concensus on a definition and, if necessary, back it with case law. We don't need interest groups co-opting words from the dictionary for their own financial interest.
Given the profusion of licenses, that might not be far from a bad idea, though I suspect a trademark licensing fee would not find many takers unless the price were in the $0.01-1.00 per year range.
I don't need the phrase anyway -- I call my work free software (which can't be trademarked), and describe it as GPL- or LGPL-licensed.
I can tell if your software is open-source if you leave the source code on your website. I can't tell if "free-range" eggs were actually laid by hens allowed to range freely.
Whether something is open-source or not is pretty obvious; whether something is organic or not is difficult to verify and not generally well-understood yet.
Why would this be less than relevant to Hacker News? Put the metaphor in a context you care about.
Right now:
Are you allowed to hack code in your living room? Can your buddies come over and help you out? Can you host your business on a server in your garage? Can you use Lisp? Can you build a mashup and earn revenue from widgets other people produce?
What if government regulations told you this:
* All code must be written in government-certified office space.
* All code must be written by professional degreed programmers hired at a minimum government-defined wage.
* All code must be Java.
* Hosting must be done by government-certified shared hosting providers.
* Your application must support at least 100k simultaneous users.
Would you be happy with that sort of regulation? Would you bother with a startup? Would you accept it all on the premise that it keeps your children safe from evil unregulated websites?
Hell, if this is the criteria for what constitutes relevant news, we may as well have articles that debate the relative merits of different world religions. After all, the debates would help shed light about how to think about our own religious wars within the hacker community.
Honestly, I have just as much of a laissez-faire libertarian philosophy as the next hacker, but there are plenty of other forums that are better suited to spreading the word. (cough reddit, cough digg)
I don't think a discussion about this sort of thing on digg or reddit would even begin to approach the high signal/noise ratio of this comment thread. For this reason, I'm not terribly disappointed with the topic digression.
True enough. I guess my point is that there were previous debates about banning TechCrunch, which has articles that are spot-on topic but of questionable validity, and then we get an article about farming regulations shooting to the top spot. I mean c'mon guys, do you want to be picky or not?
And the other problem... Having faith that people will do "the right thing?" People often don't, especially when it comes to even slightly complex things. Homeopathic remedies are a massive industry, but they've been definitively shown over and over to have no discernible effect. Religious cults still flourish in every civilized nation, despite their policy of taking everything from their members and leaving them as broken, one-dimensional caricatures. Chemical and drug abuse (as opposed to recreational use) is rampant, and our laws cannot differentiate between the two. People even deny proven science because they don't like the implications, stifling scientific progress that could help sick and dying people.
It's not a new dilemma, but it's getting more complex and urgent as our population grows. On the one hand, some people make the world better. On the other? Some people make it worse, sometimes simply through their ignorance. Distinguishing between them and giving the helpers the latitude to improve without giving the destructive forces latitude to destroy is the fundamental dilemma of any society.