[foooobaba]

I am also glad the FDA protects us from chemicals and ingredients that would cause processed food to be unhealthy and harmful, if they didn’t do that we would probably end up with an overweight population and tons of food related health problems.

[oblio]

That's the industry lobbying to prevent beneficial regulation for consumers so you're kind of making the opposite point to what you meant, I think.

[AnthonyMouse]

No, it's making the correct point. The government can't get you out of having to do the evaluation yourself because the government is broken, which is unlikely to change. In fact this is a major problem with the existence of the regulations -- they protect incumbents. Patented drugs get FDA approval, public domain drugs that could be alternatives to them don't because there is no one to pay for the approval process.

If heroin is legal, nobody forces you to buy it. If generic insulin is illegal, you're in trouble.

[oblio]

The government is as broken as we let it be.

No government is lawlessness, which is MUCH worse than a mediocre government.

I'd argue that up to a point, lawlessness is worse than even a bad government.

And nothing can beat a good to great government.

If you don't want regulations, sure, Somalia is that way --->

[AnthonyMouse]

> The government is as broken as we let it be.

How do "we" fix it? You can vote for two Senators and one Congressperson and even assuming that your vote in particular was the deciding vote and one of your choices on the ballot was someone actually inclined to do something, you now have a legislature in which the bad laws pass with a margin of 33 Senators and 174 members of Congress instead of 35 and 175.

The only way to fix it would be to fix the structural incentives in place, i.e. institute more checks and balances to prevent regulatory capture. But this is the chicken and egg problem -- to change the rules you have to be in power, but if you're already in power then you like the existing rules because they're the things that put you in power.

Or in times of populism, you use your power to remove the rules that were meant to constrain opportunities for corruption because they're inconvenient to your agenda, and then those constraints stay gone because they're inconvenient to the next administration's agenda too. So how do you get them back, or introduce new ones?

> And nothing can beat a good to great government.

The best form of government is a benevolent dictator. The worst form of government is a malevolent dictator. But the only difference is who is in charge, which changes over time.

> If you don't want regulations, sure, Somalia is that way

Is there some way we can get past the thing where people are unable to distinguish between the government prohibiting acts of violence and the government prohibiting informed consensual interactions between adults and imposing competition-destroying bureaucratic rules at the behest of incumbent megacorps?

[oblio]

Laws are about statistics. Statistically you can't trust even adults with stuff like gambling or smoking. Statistically they will make bad decisions that will wreck the lives of a big percentage of adults. Not a majority, but maybe 20%.

Accepting that fact is hard, but it's reality.

[AnthonyMouse]

Nobody is using statistics to pass these laws. There is no logical reason for cannabis to be illegal when alcohol isn't or for most stimulants to require a prescription when nicotine is available over the counter. They put caffeine in soft drinks and candy for crying out loud. The Federal Government of the United States directly subsidizes the production of high-fructose corn syrup.

There are two ways to deal with the fact that some people make poor decisions. The first is to teach people to make better decisions. This is obviously the correct answer, because it needs to be done anyway, because the second is insane. The second is to make all of their decisions for them.

And there is no "them" -- they're us. The people making the laws are just as human as anyone else. All you're doing is punting the decision to a different fallible entity which has less information because they're choosing in the abstract without the benefit of context. And causing errors to be universal rather than individual, resulting in systemic risk and lethal monoculture.

It's far better to have 20% of people make the wrong choice than 100%.

[jowea]

There are governments taking action against junk food.