Ron Paul and Libertarian ideas have been tried failed

Considering recent outbreaks of listeria and salmonella contamination in food you really think that the market alone could regulate food?

 

judoka, it is a religious faith thing. logic or evidence does not appy.

 

Ron Paul fights for the Constitution of limited federal government and stronger state/local government, not lawlessness.

The Mexican government has been subsidizing the medical treatment and medicines for it's people since the '40s. All guns in Mexico are registered with the Ministry Of Defense. Guns may not be carried in public, either openly or concealed. Mexico is overran by corporatism (like the USA)and cartels. Mexico's drug prohibition has also to blame for thousands and thousands of Mexican and American deaths. The multitude of failed big-government nanny policies have devastated the country. It is anything but liberty-oriented.

 

Noted.

Though if corporatism is an evil, and American is built on it, what does libertarianism do for preventing its adverse effects?

 

I'm stretching past my knowledge ha, but my feelings are that the FDA was unable to stop the outbreaks until after they happened, so why couldn't consumers do the same thing? I worked at Papasitos and they had an E coli outbreak, the restaurant itself took the necessary steps to control the situation without any intervention because they knew that getting people sick would hurt business.

 

Go read Upton Sinclair's work and tell me food regulation wasn't a necessity.

 

It provides for the separation of corporation and state.

 

Please explain.

 

Except that anyone who has worked in restaurants know that there is always a temptation to cut corners while there are very few restaurants that have labs to do test or access to labs to do food testing.

While we only hear about outbreaks when they happen if you compare the US with a relatively good food safety inspection and regulation program compared with countries that don't there is good evidence that many more outbreaks are stopped because of regulation.

Consider if the profit motive is a sufficient driver to improve food safety why in recent years were there many reports of adulterated food out of the PRC? Wouldn't Chinese businesses be driven just as much by a profit motive to maintain food safety? FYI the PRC has increased their food regulation in response to those reports.

 

More people should. I personally would like to see The Jungle and Atlas Shrugged packaged together so if you read one you would have to read the other also.

 

what's the point of this thread?

This country was built as a union of states with localized power. We've gotten away from that and now D.C. is more and more a centralized power. It's not eliminating the services, it's just transferring power of service and service level to state and local. And in some cases the market provides the service such as the TSA which Paul favors should be handled by the Airlines/Airports. One example he used recently was financial companies use private security firms to transfer assets, i.e. Brinks or Loomis.

it's simple really, no to the FDA and yes to the Texas HHS or Harris County PHES. why don't people understand that concept?

 

It is always simple with the Ron Paulites.

It is always results lower wages for the lower 99% and lower taxes for the upper 1%.. Oh it is so beuatiful in theory and is not meant to be that way, and would not be so if we could just be pure enough. the ower 99% just don't have much say when it comes to the market

 

Difference is in Sinclair's day I couldn't inform thousands of people I got sick from eating at restaurant X in a matter of minutes.

 

Jesus, what year is this, 1859? We may have been an union of states back then, but we're not anymore. We're one country, indivisible, and I like the idea of one regulation for foodstuffs.

 

i will preface my post by saying i am not as hardline as franchise blade makes libertarians out to be. of course there are some things that need regulation - the problem is that corporate powers control our political system. they write their own laws and regulations and give them to our elected officials to pass, often w/out them even bothering to read them.

in a true libertarian environment there would be no cap on damages like the oil industry has gotten for themselves. and our nations largest polluter, the pentagon, would not be allowed to pollute at will and be free from accountability.

didnt dozens of people die in the last few weeks from bad cantelopes? people still die all the time from bad food.

and what about bayer, who knowingly distributed blood tainted w/ HIV that infected thousands - that happened in a regulatory environment too. they violated federal laws by not properly testing the blood - they should have been sued out of existence, but instead the united states courts stepped in and decertified the class-action lawsuit b/c they said it could bankrupt the industry. there is a clear case of the government protecting bad corporations over the people it harmed. how is that right?

and in our regulatory environment the oil companies who write their own laws and give them to our elected officials to pass were able to institute a cap on liabilities when they have an oil spill. it actually disincentivized them from getting their act together. and remember that we had regulators out having sex and doing coke w/ the very people they were supposed to be "regulating".

under the libertarian philosophy of private property rights, individuals, small businesses and cities would be able to sue for damages. congress put a $75 million dollar cap on the amount that oil companies are liable for in the event of a spill. that right there was a disincentive for BP to get their act together. under a libertarian ideology there would have been no cap on their liability and BP would have been held criminally negligent and have been able to be sued by all the fishermen, local towns and small businesses that were impacted by their negligence - knowing that, i dont think it is a stretch to say that BP might have been a little more careful if they knew the government safety net was not there for them to fall into. here was a case of "government power" helping the corporations by putting a cap on the amount they would have to pay for damages and disincentivizing them from getting their act together.

and what about haliburtion - they killed u.s. troops w/ faulty wiring in showers and water tainted with feces. but since they were a government contractor they enjoyed protections that they should not have had.

im not in favor of deregulating everything as people like to say libertarians want to do, but to say that regulations provide a totally safe environment is not the case. in some instances they actually make things less safe and hold people less accountable than they otherwise would.

no matter where you stand, i think we can all agree that we want people held accountable when they harm others - the problem is that our current system is set up to limit accountability and protect large corporations.

 

removes the government protection and caps on liabilities that corporations enjoy.