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Comment by aeternum | Hacker News Reader

Government regulators were also fine with having lead in gas for decades, they didn't do much better. In fact government regulators allowing themselves to be swayed by auto-manufacturer paid safety studies probably gave the public a false sense of security.

I often wonder if we would have gotten rid of things like lead and asbestos faster if consumers had to decide for themselves rather than depending upon regulators to determine what is safe.

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Consumers can only choose from what options they're given, and if every option is leaded then that's what they'll buy. Also, if they're unaware of the negative effects of lead (or even unaware that their gasoline HAS lead) then there would be no incentive for them to choose what they're told is a worse product. This was before the internet, so it was difficult and time-consuming to do research on something like this. Gas companies said leaded gasoline was safe so everyone went with it.

The government's job here is to do that tedious research and ban/regulate anything that's hazardous to health and safety. The alternative would be a grassroots campaign by citizen experts who decide to go against the advice of what should be trusted sources, which is how you end up with stuff like the anti-vax movement.

If consumers all want unleaded and every available option is leaded, someone will make unleaded fuel and become enormously successful. That's how a market functions.

If they're unaware of the negative effects of lead or a business is being dishonest about what's in the fuel, that definitely falls under unfair/dishonest practices and the government should prosecute that.

But how on earth is that relevant to Facebook or Apple antitrust? Facebook operates a bunch of websites that millions of people voluntarily sign up for and can leave at any time. The government isn't suing Facebook for safety issues or anything, they're suing them for antitrust which means they believe Facebook has somehow unfairly coerced consumers into using their product over their competitors.

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