There's a case to be made about fine-tuning things in some ways as the article suggests, but it's still gross to frame this under the "government is bad" banner as Reason does.
This concern is especially relevant in the baby formula space, where Nestle killed thousands of babies by pushing their mothers off breast milk onto unreliably supplied formula.
Sure it would. If baby formula were unregulated the price would be lower - this is obvious on its face. It would also (probably) be riskier, and the trade-off might not be worth it, but it would be cheaper.
We systematically underestimate how much poverty is worsened by regulation that increase the prices and/or reduces the availability of goods. The left has finally gotten religion here on housing ("YIMBY" just means "deregulate construction in order to drive down prices") so maybe there's hope.
This isn’t obvious at all. One steady state condition that occurs without regulation is a predatory monopoly and price gouging.
And we aren’t even talking about fraudulent or harmful products reaching the market.
No regulation just leads to a mafia state. Nobody wants it.
Their good government policy would be to give the poor families money. This would have the great side effect of getting rid of the idiotic state by state monopolies but the justification is the same as every other tied benefit. This is stupid. Give people the money and let them decide what to spend it on. They have the information and motivation.
I guess you could argue that if formula wasn't an option then mothers would _have_ to breastfeed but then they couldn't work.
My point is that formula is a very attractive option for women so it's not like Nestle is holding a gun to their head. It's just a product they know people will buy.
I may not be representing it that well but if anything because I'm trying to carefully control my tone and am downplaying the harm knowingly caused.
There are lot of different pressures on people and a lot of reasons why they might choose not to breastfeed but the nestle thing is not really that and is as clear cut evil as it gets really go check it out.
Also, women who stay with baby for few months or weeks arw no rarity - and breastfeeding is significantly easier in that setup. Not everyone can or find it comfortable, but it is not that much PITA in median.
That said, I was also amazed at how reasonably-priced formula is here. I had other issues and ended up supplementing for awhile, and it really wouldn’t have been that big a deal - about 2-3 EUR/day using Hipp (midrange) powder if we’d had to feed it exclusively.
This is not quite true. There are plenty of libertarian thinkers that would be perfectly happy just cutting checks to poor people and letting them procure what the need.