[coldtea]

>What admirable ideal is this?!

That adults should be able to buy and sell whatever the fuck they want?

And that the government should not get a say, or even a cut?

I don't necessarily fully agree with that, but for sure it's an ideal, and has been expressed many times (e.g. by libertarians).

[freen]

I have some delightful “medicine” for you to buy.

It’s cheaper than the alternative, though, if there is rat poison in it, there is nothing you can do!

Caveat Emptor is a shit way to run a society. It incentivizes the sociopaths.

Both Hippies and Libertarians fail to understand that if your organizational principles don’t account for sociopaths, they will take over and ruin everything.

[coldtea]

>It’s cheaper than the alternative, though, if there is rat poison in it, there is nothing you can do!

Sure there is, I can take you to court.

>Caveat Emptor is a shit way to run a society. It incentivizes the sociopaths.

Bureaucracy and nanny states do that too.

>Both Hippies and Libertarians fail to understand that if your organizational principles don’t account for sociopaths, they will take over and ruin everything.

I don't think the latter are against locking people up. Or executing them even!

And the former, I dunno, perhaps they handle them Midsommar style!

Not to mention the issue is quite solvable: sellers can sell whatever, but need to specify the contents and whether they match a specification (e.g. same contents as aspirin). If you want to buy rat poison drug or heroin cut with sawdust, it's on you.

[dragonwriter]

> Sure there is, I can take you to court.

Courts can do very little to remedy the harm of dying from rat poison. They can address, in an imperfect way, the incidental harm your death by rat poison causes to other people, but, I think most people would strongly prefer not to die of rat poison, than to die of rat poison but have their dependents compensated financially for the loss of their future income, etc.

[freen]

Who will enforce such a rule?

Speedrunning the history of civil society the dumb way.

Law is the history of transgressions against the public good.