Apology accepted.


You can't hurt my feelings but I will not debate with someone that can't stick to the arguments instead of making things personal. You've been warned that such behavior will not be tolerated. So if you want an easy way out, all you have to do is insult me. From this point on, I'll assume that's why you're doing it, should you continue.

Now, on to your question...


There are two metrics, quality and price. I would expect to see something like a consumer reports for medicine or some other voluntary organization. You see, despite what some people think, there are businesses out there that know they can make money by simply providing a useful service. There can be voluntary industry standards. The mounting brackets on flat-screen displays is one example. There was no government agency that said "all flat screen displays must use this bracket" but rather, major companies realized they could benefit by setting a standard. That's why I can take a single display and mount it on one stand, then later another and finally a bracket on my wall in my exercise room. If we can have things that are somewhat trivial, imagine what we can have with something important.

So to put a finer point on things, I don't know how rating agencies should operate because I'm not in that business. However, I do know that our current government agency kills people but doesn't go out of business. It seems to me that if other private agencies existed, they too would kill people but they would go out of business and the ones that remain would be better than the ones that went out of business. That's how markets work. They weed out inefficiency and incompetence.

I hope I answered your question to your satisfaction. If not, explain what I'm missing and I'll be more than happy to clarify.

You'll be ignored as well.

Don't bother talking to me again because you clearly cannot keep this discussion academic as evidenced by your repeated childish insults. You will be ignored.

Do you really think the FDA has never approved a drug that killed people and then later revoked that approval? Even worse though are the drugs that the FDA refuses to approve or approves too slowly.


The FDA kills people in two ways, not just one. They allow bad drugs through and don't allow good drugs through. Like I said, mistakes are something all humans make. I don't require humans to not make mistakes but I do require them to pay for them. The FDA should have been driven out of business a long time ago and would have, if they were subject to market forces.

Why don't you address this instead of making ham-fisted analogies?

Even if the US didn't clear Thalidomide, other countries did and suffered because of their government agencies. It seems the fashion of the day for statists is to only acknowledge points that agree with their conclusions.



My point stands. If you were unlucky enough to be under the thumb of those agencies that approved this tragic use of the drug, you didn't even get the comfort of seeing them go out of business.

I'm now going to ignore you since you've clearly shown that you're not interested in a rational debate but would rather hurl childish insults.

Here's a drug that was approved by the FDA:


It looks like making mistakes is just something that humans do so that doesn't bother me too much. What really pisses me off is that the FDA is still alive and well. If that were a private company that made a huge mistake like that, they would be sued out of existence or at least broke because nobody would trust them. The market weeds out incompetence, which is inevitable even with government agencies, but with government agencies, they get to keep on approving bad drugs, keep on killing people, and never go out of business.


Incident rate, i.e. complications from the medicine, side effects, birth defects, organ failure, etc. If company X has a lower incident rate while company Y doesn't but both cost the same amount, I'm going to go with company X and company Y will be out of business. Like I said, the market weeds out incompetence.

How old are you?

I don't need a license to repair vacuum cleaners. There isn't government regulation in those industries comparable to the medical industry. Try to attack the spirit of the argument rather than a superficial "government has its hands in every cookie jar" type of response.


No, but I can judge which companies are doing a better job than others. People that use company X over Y to approve medicine have a lower incident rate. Of course, the more strict their controls are, the higher it costs so if I'm willing to take a higher risk for a lower cost then I'm able to.

Right now, if I want a doctor to pull a splinter out of my finger the fee is several hundreds of dollars, mainly because he has to have malpractice insurance but if I could sign a piece of paper saying I promise not to sue if you do it for cheaper then I could have it done for a lot less.

Those aren't state governments which is what we're talking about. I'm not against "government" in the chess club or any other private organizations.

It's more effective because the market would sort it out. If most people want to drive on roads where everyone else is insured then private road owners that require insurance to drive on the roads will make more money and the others would either follow or go out of business. The reason why we don't have a pizza crisis but we do have 40,000 people dying on our roads each year is because of government management. If people die, they lose nothing. They just raise taxes. If pizza restaurants start killing people, they go out of business. The market is better but you can't even get that far because all you can see is that "people aren't forced by the government to do X so therefore X will never arise in the market" which is absurd.

I know very little about cars, televisions, cellular phones, photocopiers, vacuum cleaners, etc. My body is only one of the things I don't know how to repair. How do I know how to hire people for those things? If not being an expert in something opens the door for government control then we need the government to control just about everything.


How do you think they test drugs in the first place? Obviously, we test it on animals, then we take volunteers from the terminally ill that are willing to try anything at that point. After a while, we start human trials in healthy people. How else are you going to test new drugs? Magic?

Trust me, I'm more worried about not dying than you are or some government agency. If I die, it REALLY matters to me. You probably won't shed a tear and some government agency won't even lose any money because they aren't subject to market forces.

I strongly disagree but then again, I'm extremely principled and don't abandon my principles just because I might be inconvenienced.


Why is yours? Why do you wait to lock up teenage males before they attack someone instead of locking them up before they do it?
 

Why should we force them to when you can't prove they're going to get in a wreck? In 2009 there were 24,474 deaths in vehicles and 16,591 murders. Clearly we also need murder insurance. In case you decide to kill me, my family can collect.

There's two reasons we should get rid of minimum wage. One is moral, the other is economic.

Moral:

If two consenting adults want to have sex, beat each other with whips or pour candle wax on each other, that's their business. If it's a voluntary act between two consenting adults, we should allow it to happen and no third parties have the right to interfere with them. This applies to minimum wage too. If one person wants to pay another person less than minimum wage, that's between them and we have no right to interfere as long as it's voluntary.

Economic:

Let's say that all I can do is make widgets. I can make 1 widget per hour and these widgets can be sold for $5. Therefore, my labor is worth $5 an hour. What happens when there's a law that says I can't be paid less than $7 an hour? I can't get a job. No one is going to hire me and take a loss of $2 an hour. Minimum wage laws aren't going to raise my wages. Minimum wage laws are going to keep me unemployed. If I want to work for $5 an hour and I'm forced by law not to then the law is making me worse off because I preferred to work rather than get nothing, or welfare. A family of three on welfare receives the equivalent of about a $3 an hour job. I could earn more money and be a productive member of society without minimum wage laws.

You're extremely presumptuous. You don't know what books I've read.

Anyways, we've established that you do think I should be robbed, even if only a little bit.

You make it difficult to take you seriously when all you offer is jokes.

You claim nobody wants to rob me yet if I fail to pay taxes I'll be kidnapped or murdered if I resist and my property will be taken and sold to pay for those taxes that I refused to pay.

Taxes?

Actually, all crimes are crimes of property rights. You own yourself. Rape and murder are violations of that property.


It's not just about my property. It's about the property of others as well. I don't want to live in a world where theft is seen as legitimate. There are some things more important than living a comfortable life or living at all, such as justice and morality. Everyone dies but few people live a life worth living.

It sure does. I think that murder, rape and theft are wrong and if you disagree, tough shit. I am a tyrannical bastard when it comes to you keep your hands to yourself unless you have permission otherwise.


No, I'm not. I'm forcing you to pay for things or do without, rather than steal them. It's that inflated sense of entitlement that is clouding your mind. All you can think is "me me me, mine mine mine."

Anyways, you've made your point. You feel entitled to a certain lifestyle and therefore think you are justified in advocating theft of money in the form of taxes by threat of violence or imprisonment and a bunch of other violently coercive practices. I vehemently disagree and if I had the ability to defend myself, I would. Until then, I'm biding my time.