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Comment by mynewwork | Hacker News Reader

> I write this as a man who has several uncles and cousins who are farmers, including some who raise cattle

All of whom would not be harmed by outlawing the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in agriculture.

Right now we have a situation where people raising cattle can make more profit by using antibiotics, this drives down the cost of meat to where farmers raising cattle naturally can't compete on price (and must charge a premium for antibiotic-free meat).

If the laws were changed, no one would use antibiotics, consumers would pay an extra 50 cents / pound of beef and the farmers would remain equally profitable. In fact, it might make the midwestern family farm viable again, right now they can't compete with the massive cattle lots, but such regulation could make raising 10-100 head of cattle a worthwhile endeavor again.

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The FDA has asked nicely for industry to please stop using antibiotics in feed:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230444460...

One of the unfortunate truths of current human society is that economic incentives are far more powerful than polite requests for group cooperation.

That's not an ill of modern society, it's just basic game theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma

No, it's modern society or even simply human nature.

Game Theory is a method of examining it.

This is not the Prisoner's Dilemma - the "prisoners" are allowed to talk to each other and coordinate in this case. Say all the farmers in the US sign an agreement not to use antibiotics. They also pay a small fee for policing this agreement amongst themselves to make sure that nobody is cheating. This gives a result completely different from that of the Prisoner's Dilemma.

Tragedy of the commons.

As an extremist libertarian, one whom doesn't even want the FDA to exist in the first place, I can say that the failure of the FDA to control this outrageous overuse of antibiotics is just insane.

Even extremist libertarians think that the government should be able to exert its' powers in order to prevent contagion. This is a clear example of the government failing in one of its core responsibilities.

Really? If you never wanted the FDA how could the government ever accomplish that feat? (which it currently isn't)

Wouldn't an extremist libertarian say something related to the market sorting it out?

I am genuinely interested in your opinion. (tragedy of the commons and all that)

There's no singular school of thought, but yes libertarians almost universally favor government prevention of contagion. It's also not unusual for us to favor some environmental regulations (though by no means approved by all of us!).

Markets are only one facet of a healthy functioning society. You still need government and it's courts and law enforcement. Civil courts deal with the negative externalities (pollution, contagion, etc), not markets. There are of course myriad instances of humans banding together on their own to solve tragedy of the commons issues, without the courts or regulation, but of course in the US anti-trust laws would prevent such coordination as "cartel like behavior".

But let's assume the "ultimate extreme libertarian society", in which even the air we breathe has been privatized. The air shareholders would still need to use the courts to enforce their ownership rights against polluters (a factory, for example). Without the authority of the court to back them up, the air shareholder would never be able to actually force the factory to pay for the right to pollute. The market helps ensure reasonably efficient allocation of air rights, but the courts (government) are still required to actually make the system function.

And finally, to answer your first question: Why would you need an FDA to restrict antibiotic use in agriculture? Normal courts, cops, and laws can't do that?

One needs to be very clear about US libertarian which is largely a conservative movement and libertarians in the rest of the world, who are largely considered left wing liberals and/or anarchists.

The Tea Partiers of the world hijacked the term and repurposed it for their own weird definition, I think it was that lot at any rate.

The viewpoints expressed above are straight mainline US libertarian points. 90% of US libertarians would agree in whole or part with what I said.

I don't know of any left wing liberal libertarians anywhere in the world. The anarchist libertarians (called minarchists or anarcho capitalists typically) are probably more common in the US than outside of it. Some Tea Partiers actually are libertarians, many are not.

As with everything, some people swing more left others more right. Everyone is different. But the points I presented in the previous posts are mainline libertarian points agreed upon by virtually all of them (us).

To your last point, I guess I would say that it seems like it would put a heavy burden on the police to regulate all activity that we would make illegal. Can you imagine a beat cop driving his car out to the farm to verify if illegal antibiotics were being used? The example is purposefully ridiculous, obviously.

If we create a specialized arm of the police who specialize in things like air pollution, crops, etc, are we not just recreating the same government entities that are being railed against?

It'd be a lot easier than trying to prevent the entire human population from taking recreational drugs.

Cant argue with that!

No, because hypothetically we just did a mark&sweep garbage collection.

The FDA/DEA/etc do all sorts of things - failing to regulate antibiotics, preventing women from purchasing birth control without a doctor's permission, sending people to jail for possessing herbs, etc. If we nuke it all and recreate the important bits, it's a great way to eliminate everything we don't need.

Taken to its extreme (which it has been): (1) "normal cops" need specialists to enforce rules the average beat cop doesn't understand. (2) "normal laws" are vague, imprecise and take years of debate to clarify, so we have "ministers/secretaries/directors" empowered to nimbly and precisely interpret the broad laws.

The specialists in the cops become their own sub-department. The ministers need a 'place'. Lo, why not put them together, and while we're at it, note this is very much a national 'common' problem, so lets have them all work at the federal level.

Not saying I agree that it's the way it should be, but the reduction is inevitable.

(For the record, they I think it should be is the FDA is needed, but its powers and practices need better alignment to its intended mission)

Only partially true. You assume beef is an inelastic commodity; that we must consume our beef and will pay any price come hell or high water. True for some people, perhaps :P but other people may eat less meat, eat smaller portions, or switch to being vegetarian. The reality is that a world with expensive beef means less overall consumption of beef.

In short, prohibiting indiscriminate antibiotics would make it easier on farmers who already forgo them, but it could still hurt GP's farmer relatives (assuming they're currently guzzling down antibiotics) because the overall market for beef would shrink.

You're assuming that farmers would produce the same volume of beef.

This ignores supply/demand, higher costs would definitely drive down demand, which would lower sales volume and potentially lower total revenue and profit.

(Though I think it's a good idea regardless.)

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