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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

My wife is Chinese and we go there quite often. Regulation of consumer goods and services is very light and easily circumvented, and as a result the consumer market is a cesspit of shoddy, dangerous products and deceptive practices. Its so bad one of the most prized gifts you can take there is baby formula powder, because the local versions have frequently been found to be cut with dangerous chemicals. I’ve seen and have family with experience of a deregulated market and it’s not at all pretty. Individual consumers just don’t have the resources to deal equally with big companies that have no reason to care about consumer interests, without the ability to exercise their collective power - which is what a representative government is.

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I think what I’m hearing you say is that China’s government regulations are “light”... :)

China has 8 different agencies involved in food regulation.

A government that doesn’t allow its subjects to express freedom of speech to its citizens is not “light” in anything.

The dangerousness of items produced in China is a symbol of the corruptability of the monopolization of power by government, underscored by the fact that business in mainland China starts with payoffs to local government officials.

Meanwhile, in Florida, where people are free to package up food items for sale with no license of any kind and no commercial kitchen (up to a certain volume), I don’t hear about many cases of people receiving brain damage from lead poisoning after eating cookies from their local coffee shop.

People that don’t have a foot on their neck are typically not evil by default, because they don’t have to be in order to just survive. That’s why things just work here in the US.

People accustomed to oppressive control just don’t understand these things.

Totally off-topic, but I found "baby formula powder" to be endearingly amusing. ️

Poisoning babies with melamine is amusing?

No, the turn of phrase used to describe “baby milk formula” in powder form. “Baby formula powder” implies a kind of powder that produces a baby. Hence, the off-topic comment.

OK, I get it.

It is, in a way, a powder that produces babies. Larger babies, anyway.

And by the way, the legend about Gerber baby food in Africa is reportedly bullshit.[0]

0) https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/label-fable/

melamine?! Jesus, that's what my dinnerware is made out of.

That's the monomer, yes.

Simple desire for profit drove adding melamine to milk formula for babies. In that melamine cost less than milk powder. And that it reacted like proteins in the simple test that was commonly used.

Melamine is (C-N)3 in a ring, with NH2 on each of the carbons. And all amino acids have C-NH2 on one end. Thus the name. I gather that the test scored all C-NH2 moieties. So each melamine molecule looks like three amino acids, and contains less other stuff than amino acids on average. Making it a very efficient adulterant.

that is clearly an issue with the lack of political freedom, not just regulations.

Political freedom alone won't solve tainted milk in China. People don't have the time or energy to audit every food product they purchase, establishing minimum standards to prevent death or injury from harmful food is one of the least costly ways to deal with the root issue.

Political freedom can lead to elect officials who care about such issues and take actual measures to create and enforce regulations instead of the current ones doing nothing or accepting bribes. A monopoly on politics is not optimal.

I don't see the FDA being disassembled anytime soon. Hopefully.

If only they had the political freedom to hold the government accountable for... what exactly, if not enforced regulation?

Thats what i am saying. There can be no accountability of officials if you cant replace officials with due process with folks coming out of several parties and not just one.

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