[cgriswald]

Your comment is odd considering this flaw is occurring in a system that is not 'the' libertarian ideal and the solution is close to the libertarian ideal and is working.

Consumers are being informed right now. A scandal can kill a company or a private inspector in a way that it can't kill a corporate oligarchy or bad regulation. Private inspectors have to compete for consumer dollars. Government regulators, at best, have to compete for less than half the votes of registered voters; or they are simply appointed.

In the system we have now, there will be lawsuits, but they will be capped and won't mean the death of these corporations, so will largely be meaningless and likely the entire thing will still be overall profitable to these companies. Any attempt to regulate will be met with lobbying efforts to make that regulation competition-restricting and corporation-protecting while giving lip service to protecting consumers.

[glenstein]

I think the real lesson of the story isn't that the system is "working", it's that we've (society) been purchasing tons and tons of a product for who knows how long that has been inauthentic, without any idea that it was the case. How long has this been happening? For how many other products is this the case?

It's certainly better that we know and (hopefully) some corrective action is taken, but overall I'd read it as a signal of dysfunction. And I don' think macintux is suggesting that we're presently within the libertarian ideal, rather we're in the universe where it's considered a responsibility of the state to prevent these kinds of things from happening, yet they are still happening. So look what happened here, and imagine what would happen with even fewer failsafes...

[semi-extrinsic]

> we've (society) been purchasing tons and tons of a product for who knows how long that has been inauthentic, without any idea that it was the case

Also, whenever this happens, one should stop and consider:

"Why are we buying aloe vera products in the first place, when millions of people using the product for years are unable to detect that it's fake?"

If this happened with something tangible, say replacing all regular coke with diet coke without changing the labels, it would be noticed immediately.

Whenever people buy something which they are completely unable to differentiate from a fake, are they really being defrauded when someone sells them the fake?

[klagermkii]

> Whenever people buy something which they are completely unable to differentiate from a fake, are they really being defrauded when someone sells them the fake?

Yes.

[mzw_mzw]

I think the point was that the real thing is just as much (or as little) of a fraud as the fake is.

[aarongolliver]

Especially because, if someone's been buying fakes all their life, how could they possibly know what real Aloe is like?

[albedoa]

Whenever people buy something which they are completely unable to differentiate from a fake, are they really being defrauded when someone sells them the fake?

You are seriously confusing the placebo effect with ignorance of the expected effect.

It is fraud not because the user perceives the expected effect but because the user has been told that the perceived effect is the expected one.

[burkaman]

What if it was something like soap? How could you possibly tell if you were buying fake soap? If you get sick, do you immediately suspect that your soap supplier has defrauded you?

[semi-extrinsic]

There is a difference between fake and dangerous.

[kcanini]

> Whenever people buy something which they are completely unable to differentiate from a fake, are they really being defrauded when someone sells them the fake?

Yes.

[cmurf]

I see it as an example of both market and government failure.

Edit: FTFA "There’s no watchdog assuring that aloe products are what they say they are. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t approve cosmetics before they’re sold and has never levied a fine for selling fake aloe." OK so I'm wrong, it's just market failure, the government isn't even involved in this.

[Steel_Phoenix]

Not entirely wrong. You're proof that people have the expectation that products are being well regulated. I think most people do assume this, even if they can't name a law or regulatory authority that would do so.

In a way, we're getting the worst of both worlds. The lack of oversight from an unregulated environment with the consumer complacency of a regulated one. If we could downplay the amount of oversight on products, people might be more skeptical as consumers. Putting analytical technology or services in the hands of consumers would be even better.

[pbhjpbhj]

When there's such a blatant and obvious breach of the law, in this case a fraud, against a large number of citizens (all the people who bought the product), then shouldn't the government themselves wade in and initiate legal proceedings - with an independent judiciary what's the problem with that?

Surely there is a government department that covers product fraud? In the UK we have Trading Standards (and the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) [which might be a NGO?]) that would both be in part responsible to take action on the consumers behalf ... presumably there's some action needed in the UK now, can't imagine this is only in USA.

Mind you from the article it sounds like the fraud is in quantity of Aloe Vera added; that these products may have 1ppm of Aloe Vera or something??

[sqldba]

It's weird that there's no general law covering this in America.

In Australia we have the Australian Consumer Law which covers basics like, "It has to do/be/contain what it says it does," otherwise you get a refund or replacement.

I... don't know how anyone can survive without this most basic protection.

[nsxwolf]

I think one of the reasons this particular situation went on this long is that aloe is kind of a bullshit product in the first place. What do you use it for, sunburn? Can you honestly tell the difference between some putting some jelly with aloe in it on your sunburn vs some other jelly? I don't think it's obviously effective in the way that Tylenol is on a fever or headache.

[will_brown]

I feel very confident you don't live in a tropical climate and have never experienced the application of fresh cut aloe plant.

Aloe in plant form is the real deal, and more so than any commercially processed aloe product (w/added pain relievers) or other after sun product I am aware of. It significantly defies pain/discomfort, keeps the skin moisturized and in many cases can prevent peeling from burns.

Plus you can eat/juice the gel and it has hydration and anti-toxin benefits.

[dpark]

> I feel very confident you don't live in a tropical climate and have never experienced the application of fresh cut aloe plant.

I feel very confident that this is irrelevant since lotion you might buy at Wal-Mart is definitely not fresh cut aloe regardless of whether it contains small amounts of aloe juice.

> Plus you can eat/juice the gel and it has hydration and anti-toxin benefits.

Whenever someone makes a generic reference to "toxins", I immediately doubt anything else that they say with respect to health or medicine. There are many things that are toxic to humans but there are no things that are generically "anti-toxin" except maybe water. I cannot imagine that aloe has any effect on mercury exposure, or cyanide consumption, or even tobacco smoke inhalation.

[will_brown]

>I feel very confident that this is irrelevant since lotion you might buy at Wal-Mart is definitely not fresh cut aloe

Well it isn't irrelevant because in tropical climates you are much more likely to have experienced sunburn, have ready access to aloe plants and personal experience with its benefits. For example, processed aloe gels aside Walmart's in South Florida generally will have fresh cut aloe vera plant in their produce section, not sure if that is true in non-tropical climates. Nevertheless, my point is clearly not address the aloe lotion in the article but rather claim of the comment that aloe vera itself is bullshit.

> I cannot imagine that aloe has any effect on mercury exposure, or cyanide consumption, or even tobacco smoke inhalation.

Just because I didn't go into detail doesn't mean I am making a blanket claim anti-toxin benefits means you pick any toxin you like and aloe is the answer. That is on par with losing faith in anti-biotics because people discuss anti-biotics generally but we know a given anti-biotic may not be appropriate for any and all bacterial infections. Anyway because I didn't label the toxins doesn't erase the decades of scientific studies which are pretty conclusive toxic heavy metals, including mercury and lead, readily bind with aloe vera. For example, when plants grown in polluted environments where heavy metal toxins are present other plants might not even show traces but the aloe plants will be off the charts. In the human body this binding process allows you to expel some of the heavy metal toxins. I believe studies show cilantro have a similar effect with heavy metal toxins in the body particularly mercury.

[dpark]

> my point is clearly not address the aloe lotion in the article but rather claim of the comment that aloe vera itself is bullshit.

Fair enough, but you were responding to a comment specifically talking about aloe in lotion (or "jelly" as the nsxwolf put it).

Personally, I'm not very convinced about the value of aloe, in lotions or fresh cut. I think it has therapeutic value, but I'm not at all convinced in has more value than other modern lotions that also sooth and protect the skin. I think aloe gets a free ride on the modern "natural" train, where people tend to assume that "natural" is better without any proof.

> Just because I didn't go into detail doesn't mean I am making a blanket claim anti-toxin benefits means you pick any toxin you like and aloe is the answer.

There are two problems with the term "toxins". One, it's a generically huge category, akin to "illnesses". Saying that aloe is good for "illnesses" is meaningless. Even if it's good for some particular illnesses or toxins, it's not a general solution and referring to it as such is misleading. No medical professional would say that antibiotics are good for "illnesses" because it's misleading to the point that it's nearly a lie.

Second, the people talking about "toxins" are generally snake-oil salesmen pushing "natural healing" practices with no scientific evidence. By referring to toxins in a general sense, it associates the subject of the statement with fraud. If aloe is good for dealing with "toxins", it's good for specific toxins that can be discussed directly. The reason frauds talk about "toxins" is because it sounds scary and is virtually impossible to refute directly because the category is so broad that it's meaningless.

> Anyway because I didn't label the toxins doesn't erase the decades of scientific studies which are pretty conclusive toxic heavy metals, including mercury and lead, readily bind with aloe vera.

Can you provide any evidence for this claim? I did a quick search and found nothing except "natural medicine" sites making vague claims about its benefits with no citations.

Meanwhile I did find evidence that aloe itself may be dangerous when ingested, as it's known to cause tumors in rodents as well as kidney, liver, and other problems in some humans.

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/aloe/index.cfm

http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-607...

[NikolaeVarius]

The medical benefits of Aloe are actually fairly shaky scientifically.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1313538/ CONCLUSION: Even though there are some promising results, clinical effectiveness of oral or topical aloe vera is not sufficiently defined at present.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/aloe/evidence/hr...

[coryfklein]

> Aloe in plant form is the real deal

FWIW, a quick review on wikipedia indicates that there is no scientific consensus on the effectiveness of aloe in the treatment of burns.

[will_brown]

Maybe, but according to wikipedia/the internet there is no scientific consensus that sunscreen works either or that global warming exists. Yet entire island nations are disappearing and the deniers just call that anecdotal.

Despite no scientific consensus of sunscreen, have you ever seen someone who forgot to apply sunscreen to a certain part of their body and its the only area that gets burned? That is one hell of a placebo.

Alternatively the same is true of aloe, you can witness people who already have a burn and apply aloe to certain areas and not others and the burn will clear up quicker and even potentially the skin will not peel where aloe was used and may peel where it was not utilized.

Now whether there is scientific consensus or not, if that is what you bring to the table, I will go out on a limb like I did with the parent post and say you have no personal experience using aloe plant for sunburn.

[ddeck]

>Maybe, but according to wikipedia/the internet there is no scientific consensus that sunscreen works either or that global warming exists.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_...

The scientific consensus is that the Earth's climate system is unequivocally warming, and that it is extremely likely (meaning 95% probability or higher) that this warming is predominantly caused by humans. It is likely that this mainly arises from increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as from deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels, partially offset by human caused increases in aerosols; natural changes had little effect

[nsxwolf]

Sunscreen not working is news to me. I burn easily. You can see burned finger marks on the areas of my skin that I miss.

This seems trivially easy to test.

[kevin_thibedeau]

You don't have to live in the tropics to grow aloe. They can survive a winter in a sunny window. And yes, it most definitely does work on sunburn straight from the plant.

[nommm-nommm]

When I was a child I got a very bad grease burn. Fresh aloe cut right from the plant was applied it to the burn. Didn't seem to do anything.

[will_brown]

The enzymes in aloe reduce inflammation, increase blood flow to the damaged tissue, provide antibacterial compounds to avoid infection and stimulate cell production to speed up healing.

Now I understand the above can be both read fairly (i.e. similarly honey has antibacterial properties and has been used to treat wounds from ancient times through the Civil War) or unfairly (magical claims aloe is a cure all). Moreover, I am not claiming a single application is going to magically make a burn disappear. However, the same way one might continually apply neosporin, a burn cream and/or vitamin E to a burn to obtain certain benefits one might see similar benefits of those three from an aloe plant.

Certainly it is a lot more difficult to test the benefits of aloe on a grease burn rather than a sunburn where aloe can be continually applied in certain areas, sparingly in certain areas and not at all in others. Think of a sunscreen where someone uses sunscreen on half their body and nothing on the other half, then in reverse advertising aloe, by no means am I saying its a 1:1 but the difference would be no less noticeable.

[nommm-nommm]

You'd probably get the same effect if you applied lotion.

[semi-extrinsic]

FWIW, aloe isn't really a good remedy for sunburn. A sunburn, like any other skinburn, should be treated quickly with lots of running water slightly colder than lukewarm; i.e. a cold shower. That's a lot more efficient due to basic physics.

[dllthomas]

Could you spell out the basic physics? I am having trouble connecting it to anything I learned in school. Biology/chemistry seems substantially more relevant.

[semi-extrinsic]

To help heal the sunburn you must cool the skin. Aloe can only cool by a very small amount, as compared to running cool water.

[stouset]

Sunburn has nothing to do with temperature. You can get a third-degree sunburn in sub-freezing temperatures.

[dllthomas]

It's that first step that isn't clear to me. It may be the case, but it needs something other than physics to tell us that - and it doesn't tell us why slightly-cooler-than-lukewarm water is better than ice water.

[WildUtah]

Evidence of the effectiveness of Tylenol on fever or headache is very, very weak. It's similar to the evidence for aloe.

Mostly Tylenol is administered as a placebo. Fake aloe is at least useful as a moisturizer.

[chillacy]

Really? I found several double blind studies showing the effectiveness of acetaminophen on headaches:

http://www.neurology.org/content/48/1/103.short

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/10...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1526-4610.2006....

[skrap]

> Consumers are being informed right now. A scandal can kill a company or a private inspector in a way that it can't kill a corporate oligarchy or bad regulation.

I'm not convinced. Scandals don't scale. How many scandals per year do people actually have the attention and outrage to push through into action? 10? 100?

It's my opinion that we need regulation to set the ground rules of our interactions with companies, which will always ALWAYS be tempted to deceive us. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't spent 2 minutes in any corporate marketing department.

[nickik]

I agree. scandal is not enough. If somebody is guilty of fraud he should be sued by everybody.

In a good legal system many small claims should be bought and then somebody could sue the company for money. This would be a superior version of a class action lawsuit. A version that is actually practical and would scale.

Its also not a new idea, there are historical examples of this.

[nommm-nommm]

>In a good legal system many small claims should be bought and then somebody could sue the company for money. This would be a superior version of a class action lawsuit. A version that is actually practical and would scale.

This exists, it's called small claims court.

[nickik]

That goes in the right direction but there are many problem that hinder it from scaling.

A organisation can not buy millions of claims from consumers and the fight a full class action lawsuit without any of these people being involve.

[mzw_mzw]

When you can buy and sell a legal action like that it strikes me as a super bad idea. Wouldn't there be some legal equivalent of the patent trolls who today purchase outdated patents and then go around filing nuisance suits based on them?

[nommm-nommm]

You make no sense.

If you want to sue CVS for selling you fake aloe go ahead, it costs less than $100 to file a small claims case in my state and CVS will very likely settle with you outside of court because it's cheaper than sending someone to court to defend the company.

[nickik]

Today you can not buy up a hole group of claims and make a collective action suit on behave of the other people. That is not legal.

There are many other problems with the courts that make the system I proposed currently impossible.

[Frondo]

You know what I don't get? How would regulations (the bane of the libertarian existence) be burdensome in this situation?

The regulation could say something like, products labeled "aloe vera" must contain mechanically extracted aloe vera without chemical alteration. I would guess that that's what most people who're trying to buy aloe vera are actually trying to buy. They're probably not trying to buy aloe vera with sugar added or with various additives replacing the aloe vera bits or whatever. (And isn't this who regulations are for? The buyers?)

People who want the sugary aloe vera could still buy it, but it'd have to be called something else. "Burn liniment with aloe vera in it somehow," maybe.

How would that burden manufacturers?

(By the way, I do agree with the libertarian angst around regulations, but mostly where those regulations are used as weapons against historically disadvantaged communities. Like the regulations around hairdressing that make people do some ungodly huge number of training hours to be able to braid cornrows for money. The law often gets crafted to keep poor folks or minorities down, and that pisses me off. Get rid of that shit yesterday!)

[zdragnar]

The existence of a regulatory structure means that if it's on a shelf, 99% of consumers trust it (see also nutritional supplements). The defacto assumption is that if it wasn't safe / correctly labeled, the government has done or will do something about it.

The libertarian ideal would see consumers lose that fake safety net in favor of private organisations finding and providing that information; the specific mechanisms would vary but likely be not very different than what the government does now. The important piece is that people would stop assuming that words on a package are imperically true.

It's a bit like the argument that Trump would have won the popular vote without the electoral college... because it existed, he campaigned differently than if it hadn't. Whether or not he actually could have gotten the popular vote is impossible to know at this point, but it's a hypothesis just the same.

[Spooky23]

We've been here before:

http://sippncorn.blogspot.com/2014/01/false-advertising-and-...

[ethanbond]

Wait but then why wouldn't the private organizations be the "fake safety net?"

[lisper]

We actually have a data point: this is exactly what happened during the financial crisis, when ratings agencies sold fraudulent ratings on mortgage-backed securities. There is no way to structure a compensation structure so that reliable ratings information can be provided on the open market because there is no way to restrict the flow of information only to those customers who have paid for it. Perverse incentives of some form are thus inevitable.

[maxxxxx]

See ratings agencies during the financial crisis. They are the perfect example for private organizations that should have uncovered problems but instead were corrupt. Of course hardcore libertarians will say that they didn't do it right....

[coryfklein]

I assume they would be? If a store stocks two "Aloe Vera" products, and one has the seal from the private organization, then customers will know that the private organization vouches for the product with the seal.

The theory is that if the seal adds value to the product insofar as it accurately assesses some quality or standard of the product.

[rfrey]

Why wouldn't a company just lie about having the seal? Or a slightly modified one if there is still remnants of trademark law in our libertarian thought experiment.

[chillacy]

I'm not sure removing trademark law is a libertarian thing as much as an anarchist thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_perspectives_on_in...

But it seems like the extent that copyright/trademark law is needed is still under debate. I think there's an argument that if you can own a parcel of land legally, you can probably own some data you produced, but there should be consideration for things like expiration date so it enters the public domain eventually.

[zdragnar]

They are, but would engender less trust than if the government had approved it. Ergo, more critical review of their approvals / marketing.

For consumer goods, companies would hold each other accountable- no company would advertise "X approved" once X was discovered to commit fraud or otherwise misrepresent their reviews.

As for sibling comments on ratings agencies, I disagree.

On the one hand, ratings agencies alone were not solely to blame; though they were ill equipped to understand the complexity of the new structures. As a result, the big three settled at least 14 lawsuits, suffered stock losses and other harms.

Tell me, what can you do when the government fails? You can't sue the EPA when their inspectors accidentally cause a slurry retention pond to spill massive amounts of toxic waste. You can't sue the FDA when their safety inspections fail to catch conditions which allow spoilage and food poisoning. You can't sue the FDA when lobbyists push through unsafe medications.

Guess who you can sue for damages? Private organisations (until the government interferes even more by declaring them too big to fail)

[nommm-nommm]

Oh really? Right from the horse's mouth

https://www.epa.gov/noi

>Many of the environmental statutes that govern EPA actions contain provisions that allow citizens to sue EPA when EPA fails to perform an act or duty required by the statue.

Right now there's a few lawsuits against the FDA to try to prevent them from regulating e-cigs.

[zdragnar]

I'll admit my examples were poor, but both of those you cited are apples to oranges comparisons.

First, the lawsuits against the FDA are for over extending their regulatory reach, not for incorrectly asserting the qualities of a product.

The note on the EPA is likewise allowing suits when it fails to act, not when it causes harm by acting. Even the Navajo lawsuit over the golden kings mine incident is based on years of neglectful oversight. The gold king mine corporation and some contractors are being named in the lawsuit for the actual damages.

Edit: for what it's worth, I'm not personally in favor of ending ALL regulation in favor of creating a market for ratings companies; there are plenty of places in the economy where it wouldn't work as well as others. I'm merely playing devil's advocate, since the question was asked. The best places for this sort of thinking are really limited to consumer goods, if that.

[Retric]

These companies are being sued which is the libertarian solution. However, clearly that did not prevent this from happening because running a business that will eventually be sued to oblivion is still profitable now.

So, best case nobody notices and they win, worst case someone notices and they still win. Much like large companies use 3rd party's to have undocumented people clean their toilets without being exposed to any real risks.

[beguiledfoil]

The libertarian solution is appeal to a higher authority? Is this one of those turtles things?

[coryfklein]

Just because there is a higher authority doesn't require that infinite higher authorities exist.

One possible libertarian replacement of courts are Stefan Molyneux's Dispute Resolution Organizations, but that's probably not the only way it could be done.

[nerfhammer]

Scandals and regulations aren't mutually exclusive, you seem to be saying they are?

[x0x0]

We explicitly excluded supplements and cosmetics from fda regulation in 1994, at least in part due to industry lies culminating in ads featuring Mel Gibson showing militarized police breaking into a house to take away vitamins.

[lern_too_spel]

This flaw is occurring in a system for which the products in question are unregulated. Imagine how much worse it would be if the libertarians had their way and deregulated everything else.

[nitwit005]

> is close to the libertarian ideal and is working

Working to some extent, right? There are whole categories of products that are heavily faked or adulterated.

[vacri]

> Private inspectors have to compete for consumer dollars.

No they don't. They just have to compete for 'dollars', not 'consumer dollars'. Big industry will quite happily pay for favourable reports.

And seriously, who is going to individually pay for an inspector of a bottle of aloe? A big ticket item like a house, sure, but a cheap bottle of goo?

[bertiewhykovich]

lol yeah, corporations are constantly shut down when they betray consumer trust. The Chicago stockyards went belly-up when "The Jungle" came out.

[jamoes]

"The Jungle" is a work of fiction, in case you weren't aware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle

[nommm-nommm]

"Sinclair was considered a muckraker, or journalist who exposed corruption in government and business.[4] In 1904, Sinclair had spent seven weeks gathering information while working incognito in the meatpacking plants of the Chicago stockyards for the newspaper. "

[bertiewhykovich]

Saw this article and just ran with the title, eh? https://www.libertariannews.org/2012/11/15/meat-packing-lies...

Turns out it doesn't actually "expose the fiction of 'The Jungle.'" It cites "a 1906 report by the Bureau of Animal Industry" -- and nothing else. It then runs headlong into a classic libertarian diatribe against regulations.

And even if "The Jungle" /was/ pure fiction (instead of just fictionalize) -- readers didn't know that. And, despite their revulsion, the stockyards kept chugging along.