[zanny]

> but if they are the type of place to skimp on health issues, it isn't that much of a stretch to believe they may lie about health issues.

I'm not saying the restaurant itself would give itself a rating, I'm saying that if there was an economic advantage to information garnered from food safety, a private company could charge restaurants to get rated, and restaurants would seek ratings to garner customers. The fact such a service does not exist indicates that customers don't care about food safety enough to change their dining preferences to restaurants that provide such information, or else restaurants would do it, and I would be the first to line up to found that company because it would be an unexploited profit center.

> accountability and information asymmetry was GTA...

You can falsify the state of your kitchen just as much to a state inspection agent as a private one. And in both cases being caught doing it has repercussions, the former would be police at your door, the later a slander campaign by the ratings board.