Comment by Jabanga | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jabanga | Hacker News Reader

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The certification programs on the market are excellent. The problem is there is no certification program for the problem elucidated by the parent comment. This is an entrepreneurial opportunity.

>We have already plenty of certification companies that take your money in exchange for a nice logo/label on the packaging. You still need an expert to tells if they do it right.

I think you're underestimating how reputation and communication lead to consumers gaining reliable information in the marketplace. Apple didn't develop a reputation for quality and customer service for nothing. It earned that reputation, and the marker rewarded it for it. Consumer knowledge is often times far more sophisticated than voter knowledge. If consumers are too ignorant to solve this problem, then I have no faith voters will solve it. This comes down to a problem of ignorance, and once that problem is solved, then marketplace solutions can be introduced, whether through cookie-cutter mandates imposed by government that reduce our freedom, or through a diverse array of products/services provided by entrepreneurs that expand our options.

This idea that since you need an expert, it must be done through regulations imposed on everyone, is nonsensical. Experts can work for nongovernmental organizations too, and can have a contractual obligation to serve the public interest, just as government officials do. Moreover, the government can appoint experts to the task, and provide its own certification of what products meet its standards, without making said standards mandatory.

Frankly I find this insistence that only a government appointed body, that imposes standards that no one in society is allowed to opt out of (even if they like BPA in their food), would work, because of an almost religious like faith that market mechanisms, meaning people interacting through voluntary exchanges and contracts, can't work, to be immature.

Assuming no pollution-related concerns affecting non-participants, there is absolutely no moral justification for prohibiting people from buying/selling food containing some hormone disrupting chemical. What society needs is the information with which to make informed decisions. But that decision should be each individual's to make.

I think I fear that marketing forces are stronger than consumer knowledge. I spend too much time debunking facts on Facebook posted by relatives to think that people in general want to spend time looking for the truth. Also we have studies that shows that doctors doesn't understand enough statistic to understand medical studies and make good choice. I also see that ordinary folk don't discern the difference in knowledge between a TV pundit a TV-star and an expert.

I don't believe that government are perfect and the only solution but I think they can be part of it. You have classes of problem where regulation is an answer, one of them is when the condition of a fair market are not met: Monopoly, information asymmetry (You don't have the same resource as GS to understand the market condition ). So some regulation are in place to allow a market to work for all.

The state is there to define the boundaries of acceptable behavior because he is the only one that is allowed to use violence to enforce rules. I think we need to have a minimal level of regulation because we need some liberty to have innovation. This minimum is difficult to agree on and I suspect the level of regulation i would accept is higher than yours but I think you accept certain level. Most people would reject slavery, experimentation on human, kidnapping, extortion ... as normal behavior. But they were accepted at some point.

>I think I fear that marketing forces are stronger than consumer knowledge.

I fear regulations for that reason. If political marketers convince voters to elect some puppet for special interests, who imposes regulations mandating I use some inferior product, by prohibiting all other options, I have no way to opt out.

I trust the ability of people to see through marketing lies when it's in the context of an organic market with multiple options, mediated my consumer interest, more than when it's relating to politics and proposed regulations to mandate one solution for the entirety of society.

There is a lot of propaganda out there to make people fear the market, and to believe that its advocates are the bad guys (unsuspecting dupes for corporate interests), and I believe that this is by design, and the originators of these memes are in fact projecting. They represent a powerful elite who stand to extract economic rent when the state eliminates choice from market in the name of consumer protection, and they have created an elaborate ideology to convince the population to support their policies. Don't fall for it.

>Monopoly, information asymmetry (You don't have the same resource as GS to understand the market condition ).

The government can address monopolies without prohibiting consumer choice. It can simply fund a public option. For example, it can provide publicly owned roads, so that people aren't stuck with a private road network. It doesn't need to prohibit private roads.

As for information asymmetry, this is effectively dealt with in the market. See my microprocessor example I brought up earlier.

>Most people would reject slavery, experimentation on human, kidnapping, extortion ... as normal behavior.

These are all qualitatively different than buying food with hormone disrupting chemicals. In fact, the law you're advocating is more like these things, as it reduces personal autonomy by restricting the right to engage in voluntary interactions. It is clear when a legal remedy is appropriate, and when it is not. This can be deciphered by considering the nature of the law:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/enforci...

I think you are quite correct to point that law and regulation reduces personal autonomy and that the law is violent in is nature. I agree 100% that the impact of marketing on the result of election and it scares me a lot the new trend to use social mass data to win election. I m more and more in favor of sortition for this reason. I agree also that you have regulation set up by people that seek rent above everything.

I think I fear also the harm that powerful people or corporation do right now and I think someone need to take action. What is difficult is to have the right balance between liberty and regulation.

We see a division between continental Europe and Anglo-saxon country; In Europe we have more regulation and I think less economical growth and less innovation and the US where it seems you have less regulation but often more meant to create rent and crazy companies behavior but you have growth and more innovation.

Thanks for your comments, it s nice to have a good conversation :)

Beyond the intellectual debate on net economic effect, we should have the humility to not punish people with legal penalties for actions that are fundamentally voluntary.

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