Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Dracophoenix 1492 days ago
So-called "societal interests" are rhetorical pretexts defined by government itself, many of which are almost completely fictional and disingenuous. There is no consistent definition of what constitutes "societal interests" due to the reality that individual citizens have interests as unique as themselves. No individual citizen or society created, voted for, or granted power to these various regulatory agencies.

As far as infant formula goes, you can't regulate away what you call trivialities. Anyone who has ever worked in manufacturing, particularly quality control, will tell you there will always be defects. The regulations that exist now just leads to our current situation with mass recalls of even perfectly safe baby formula. If these recalls get too expensive, these companies will move to other locations if not go out of business entirely.

> That depends heavily on that country's stance on human rights

Define "human rights". A government that picks its "societal interests" is one that picks it's implementation of human rights. Suffice it to say, such governments aren't very interested in protecting those rights. Some may go so far as to violate them.

1 comments

I, as an individual citizen of these United States of America, hereby grant power to all the various regulatory agencies. There, it has been done, for better or for worse.

More seriously though, I do not know how to bridge the gap between us. We clearly have wildly different beliefs, and our languages differ too much. I wish you the best of luck in the world where government is the root of all evil, for I cannot join you there.