[iheartmemcache]

It's not as easy as that. Take the meat/poultry/milk products industry. In the EU, legislators have done a net-good for humanity by aggressively issuing legislation restricting antibiotics and growth-hormones. This is widely accepted as good for humanity as evidenced in this seminal article[1]. The sword cuts both ways.

[1] http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/content/53/1/28.full

[ceejayoz]

See also: vehicle safety features like airbags, seatbelts, crumple zones, child car seats, safety testing, etc. Collectively, they've helped drop car crash injuries and fatalities enormously.

[djschnei]

Because humans, without regulation, don't value vehicle safety. Gotcha.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism

[ceejayoz]

> Because humans, without regulation, don't value vehicle safety. Gotcha.

Basically. Humans are horrible at cost/benefit calculations on an abstract level that may not directly affect them for years or even ever on an individual scale. I've known people who won't wear seatbelts because someone they know got trapped by one in a freak accident, despite overwhelming statistical evidence that's a dumb approach. The industry also has a long history of fighting regulations that require safety features but make cars more expensive.

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/07/20/weekinreview/the-give-and-...

> Last month, Ford proposed weakening the transportation department's 1984 rule in exchange for faster introduction of air bags in its cars. The company offered to install the bags on the driver's side of a majority of its cars by the 1990 model year if the department would drop its requirement that the front seats of all cars be equipped by then with automatic or so-called passive belts, designed to restrain the passenger as the car door closes.

http://blog.esurance.com/seat-belt-history/

> A Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard proposes that all vehicles made after January 1, 1973, include an automatic restraint system, i.e., air bags or automatic belts. The auto industry, knowing that it would have to increase production costs to meet the new standard, balks, leading to a decade of argument and delay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed

etc.

[Aloha]

The automatic belt systems also had the disadvantage of being fiddly, unreliable and complex. While the airbag is not as effective without belts, its much more reliable, and much less complex mechanically than automatic seatbelts.

[ceejayoz]

That's hardly the only piece of tech the car companies have fought. Air bags and shoulder seat belts, among other things. The National Highway Traffic Safety Act of 1966 appears to be pretty universally cited as the turning point from a rapidly increasing rate of automative deaths to a dramatic, sustained drop over the next few decades.

[coldtea]

>Because humans, without regulation, don't value vehicle safety.

Judging from everybody I've seen texting while driving, NO, they don't.

You keep using this word, totalitarianism. I don't think it means what you think it means.

I mean, seat belt laws are totalitarian? That's kind of insulting to the victims of totalitarianism everywhere...

[djschnei]

I am painfully aware of what totalitarianism is... Should I not talk about it and warn against it until it's undeniably here? Sometimes it is very hard to figure where you would draw the line on political influence.

[heartsucker]

Telling a car manufacturer to design a vehicle that doesn't kill it's occupants ishardly totalitarianism. Calling it such does a disservice do everyone by conflating helpful laws with actually totalitarian things the government does.

[coldtea]

>I am painfully aware of what totalitarianism is... Should I not talk about it and warn against it until it's undeniably here?

No, you should just avoid the slippery slope fallacy.

[dibujante]

BUCKLE YOUR STALINBELTS. TAXES ARE THEFT. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, UNDERSTANDING IS IGNORANCE, ETC.

[djschnei]

And I can almost guarantee that this has negatively effected the purchasing power of those least well off in the EU. Along with other various detrimental unintended consequences. Which is why, morally, this is wrong through force. If I want to eat growth-hormone free meats, that's my choice. This "net-good" talk is nonsense.

[coldtea]

>And I can almost guarantee that this has negatively effected the purchasing power of those least well off in the EU

And I can guarantee absolutely that purchasing power is not the be all end all, and that leaving it all to the free market and "if I want X, it's my choice" creates more issues than it solves. For example, nobody labelling what they sell as X (but as X+, the better variety), without legislation to prevent them.

And the same argument goes to BS like avoiding vaccination and people teaching Creative Design to their kids.

[Retric]

All I see when I read that is, it should be my choice to kill hundreds of millions of people. This is about more than say the deaths from say the Holocaust, this is about more lives than where lost in all of WWI and WWIII combined.

Antibiotics have already saved ~200 million lives, 80% of their use is in livestock, and they are of limited long term value. A reasonable guess is a Billion+ lives hang in the balance.

[katbyte]

Can you honestly say cheap meat is morally worth the antibiotic resistance and animal cruelty it often leads too? When did cheap meat become a right?

[djschnei]

And, as usual, you are quickly pulled into the straw-man: "well if you don't want government to solve it, than you don't want it solved". I don't want to forcefully deprive the poor of food, that is true. I don't really want to forcefully do anything.

We convinced millions of people they'll feel better if they don't eat gluten. An entire cottage industry created. All without force. All without the influence of politics and fallible men.

[sedachv]

> We convinced millions of people they'll feel better if they don't eat gluten. An entire cottage industry created. All without force. All without the influence of politics and fallible men.

How do you make the logical leap from "a big diet fad happened" to "the FDA is redundant and evil?"