| It is tempting to gush about how brilliant Rachel is, and I have a lot of respect for her, but I think mostly that all news shows should be roughly at this level of calm, reasoned and historically aware debate.
Rachel isn't doing anything exceptional except that in the dearth of outspoken liberals on TV for more than a decade, this sort of thing became too rare so it just seems amazing. It isn't very complicated. People seek profit, some of them will sell you your own children in a meat pie if they can get away with it, and the market's sole inherent regulation mechanism, "reputation" simply cannot prevent all manner of profit-seeking socially destructive behaviour. Consumers aren't omniscient or anywhere near close enough to it for that to function.
Libertarians might be willing to accept the risk of e-coli and melamine in their food in order to adhere to market principles, but that's why almost no one takes them seriously and their ideology isn't even an option in polling.
For the rest of us, it's a big improvement to have someone on TV gently remind us why it makes sense to have a government employee go into food production facilities and determine if they are operating safely. And that this costs tax-money, but the market won't do it better because whatever things it does well, this isn't on the list.
Those that want to still claim somehow that the market can self-regulate have to respond to these evident failures to do so. Privately employed health inspectors have no incentive to close down an unsafe plant, if they work for that company they could get fired. If they don't, then the company is a client and they don't want to bankrupt a paying customer. It's almost the same thing that happened to Arthur Anderson in the Enron fiasco. The companies employing the inspectors will only train them enough to assure consumers that "inspections" are being done - not to any objective health standard. On and on at every juncture the profit motive will subsume the public interest in safe food.
This isn't theoretical. It is happening now, and it has happened before. Whatever the dangers of over-regulation, they pale to those of under-regulation. This isn't just a few upset tummies. E-coli conservativism is killing people. |
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