With our current crop of big-government bullshit artists the word Libertarian hardly seems to mean anything anymore. For those who forgot, Greenwald serves it up straight.
The general topic of why we have prescription drug laws seems pretty easy to answer. One, a huge number of drugs on the market become habit-forming very fast. These medications often make a formerly rational person begin to act irrationally in order to serve the habit. Rush Limbaugh makes a bad example since he was never rational, but you get my point. In an uncontrolled environment practically everybody who has an addictive personality, which is a very large number of people, will have a habit by their eighteenth birthday.
Second, even professional pharmacists have a hard time keeping up with the huge number of dangerous drug interactions. Some interactions are automatically bad, some become risky with certain medical complications. The libertarian model hardly breaks down if consumers are willing to take risks that doctors are not, but it absolutely depends on consumers’ ability to gauge risks accurately. When it comes to prescription drugs the concept of a fully informed consumer becomes untenable.
So there you have it – what libertarianism really looks like and why, in my view, it doesn’t work.
Andrew J. Lazarus
Greenwald also forgot about antibiotic abuse leading to resistant superbugs. Libertarians are often a little weak on negative side effects on third parties of their policies.
Jil In Pattaya
Sorry. I’m a liberterian and I don’t support repealing prescription drug rules. They are there for protection, and a person should obtain a doctor’s permission before taking most currently-prescription drugs.
However, what I do believe is that once a doctor’s persmission is obtained for a prescription drug, the patient should (in many cases) have the option to renew that prescription on his or her own… but that is about as “anti-establishment” as I (or most liberterians) would get.
James Gary
I’m not sure why Greenwald, who’s normally a pretty coherent thinker, wrote that prescription-drug post at all. Fortunately, his first forty commenters (and Tim F. here) all cite solid reasons why professional judgement *should* be required to prescribe drugs.
Fwiffo
Libertarians either forget or willfully ignore societal effects of individual choices. The old adage that your rights end at your neighbor’s nose would be great if libertarians had a more realistic notion of where their neighbor’s nose began.
The reason you need a prescription for many drugs is the same as the reason you need a license to drive a car (or do lots of other things.) Many drugs can make you a danger to others or affect your state of mind to make you unfit to make informed judgments. Also, incorrect use of antibiotics has the side effect of breeding drug-resistant bacteria, which is something that affects everybody.
Additionally, even if you were determined to be in a fit enough state of mind to decide what drugs you ought to receive, you could easily provide those drugs to people who should have them because they’re not able to make informed judgments for whatever reason (they’re an addict, mentally ill, a minor, etc.)
Glenn Greenwald
Andrew J. Lazarus:
No, I didn’t. I wrote this right in the post: “And other than consumption of medicine which can actually affect the public health (such as excessive consumption of antibiotics), why should an adult be deemed a criminal for using a particular medicine all because a doctor (for whatever reasons, including self-interest) will not give permission?”
Tim:
That, of course, is true for any number of things that are perfectly legal, most obviously (but my no means only) alcohol. And if people engage in behavior to “serve the habit” that are crimes (i.e., stealing), then that is a crime. That’s also true for any number of legal activities that people want to engage in.
People are allowed to do all sorts of things far, far more dangerous than consuming prescription drugs. They can smoke, they can get drunk every day, they can hang-glide.
And as I said in the post, the frame of reference for me is the attorney-client relationship. People who are involved in criminal proceedings face prison for decades, often leaving their families broke and shattered. Yet they always have the right to make whatever decisions they want no matter how stupid and self-destructive – even if a lawyer advises otherwises, and they’re even allowed to make those choices with no lawyer at all. What’s the difference?
I actually don’t think it’s a matter of being some sort of “libertarian” — it’s just a belief that individuals have the basic right to make decisions about their own lives without other people restricting those choices strictly on the ground that they know better.
Zifnab
If you ever read a little John Nash or just study some basic sociology, you can see why Libertarianism doesn’t work. A person’s first instinct isn’t always his best instinct and you can’t just rely on everyone to act well together simply because.
Teamwork and group efforts are necessary to achieve anything truly significant. And rules that govern the masses are necessary to keep the strong from trampling the weak or the majority from tyrannizing the minority.
Civil Rights legislation, boarder patrols, and speed limits/highway construction are three perfect examples of things that can’t function without a strong overarching government to enforce them. Libertarianism can’t solve any of these problems because they would all require a ‘liberatarian consensus’ that will never exist. People don’t roll out of bed on morning and say, “We really do need an interstate transportation system”. You’ll never find three hundred random people who can agree on the proper top speed on a major roadway, much less 300 million. How do you secure your boarders skillfully when a fraction of your population wants to shoot immigrants on site, a fraction wants to abolish the boarder entirely, and a respectable chunk honestly doesn’t care? And, of course, if Libertarian ideas were so ironclad, are they suggesting we treat aparthied and voter disenfranchisement as simple market forces?
There’s another word for Libertarianism that Republicans will never admit to. And that word is “anarchy”. A social structure in which the biggest caveman with the biggest club wins. It’s a pathetic joke of a governmental system.
Zifnab
Gak. I can’t compete with Glenn. Just ignore my post entirely.
chopper
i think that may be where some of us part ways; the job of a doctor is not just as an advisor. doctors bear much more responsibility for the health of their patients than an attorney bears for the legal ramifications of their client’s actions.
metalgrid
There are valid arguments for keeping anti-biotics, anti-fungals and habit-forming drugs on a prescription only basis. There are no valid arguments for keeping drugs that are less harmful than aspirin on a prescription basis and there are plenty of such controlled drugs right now.
Glenn Greenwald
Right – that begs the question: given that clients in a legal matter often have as much at stake (sometimes more) than in a medical matter, why are they given autonomy with regard to their legal choices but not their medical choices?
chopper
take thorazine for example. glenn, your doctor friend mentioned IIRC that it isn’t scheduled but required a prescription.
now, outside of the fact that i personally don’t want to see tons of people doing the shuffle, spaced out of their gourds after hooking up with the stuff over the counter at the local pharmacy, thorazine is one of those drugs whose application needs to be monitored if used long-term. a patient’s pulse and BP, liver and kidney functions, blood count and EEG all need to be checked regularly which isn’t exactly something a patient can do on their own.
chopper
i think it’s a basic difference between the system of law and the system of medicine. i don’t think that what’s best for the legal system is best for medicine and vice versa; i don’t personally enjoy the idea of an adversarial medical system (although those of you with HMOs might complain you’re already part of one, heh).
RSA
I don’t see anything wrong in principle with people making their own decisions about which drugs to take. In practice, though, I think we’d want to ask about the overall costs and benefits. Well-informed people might make better decisions than doctors; poorly informed people might do worse. Are the latter on their own with respect to health care? That is, would having taken a drug not prescribed by a doctor be grounds for being turned down for health insurance? Would it become harder in general to get good information about drugs if doctors aren’t the gatekeepers? My basic point is that eliminating prescription drug laws, in the interests of increasing personal liberty, also involves a potentially enormous shift of risk from doctors to patients.
chopper
also, think about it this way; no offense to you attorneys, but technically you aren’t needed in that a person can represent themselves pro se, right? if i’m being sued i can provide my own representation.
the fact that we have large swaths of scheduled drugs at all or drugs that we agree should be prescribed specifically by a physician (antibiotics) means that that isn’t possible for a person to act as their own doctor except in certain cases such as the current over-the-counter system.
so unless you think that a person should be able to get any drug out there if they want without a doctor, they aren’t quite the same.
Rome Again
Because you can’t take it with you?
Jake
Attorney-client privilege has it’s limits. Your attorney can’t advise you to do something that is illegal.
However, if the argument is: People shouldn’t need to go to a doctor for a script, why is the relationship between dr. and pt. relevant? The doctor is out of the picture because I no longer need him to get medicine.
Something I don’t see the doctor’s going for, but anyhoo…
I guess under this model I’d go to the doctor if I felt sick and wasn’t sure what was wrong, he’d diagnose and recommend a medication or two I could take and I’d go to the pharmacy. Or would all meds be OTC?
I guess if I (as a patient) self-diagnose and screw up at least there’s no one to blame but moi. But I also wonder how this would work for minors. Do their parents diagnose/decide?
grumpy realist
The fallacies I’ve run into with Libertarianism:
1) “No taxes!” –> you’re either going to be paying taxes to the gov’t or protection money to the warlords. What’s your pick? Countries with warlords don’t usually have very advanced economies.
2) Tragedy of the Commons. ’nuff said.
3) Any consumer can easily obtain all relevant information about a company and a product it makes so as to be able to be a perfect consumer. Yeah, right. Even with the internet, time for researching all this somehow never enters into the equation.
4) “We don’t need regulations, people will just interact rationally” –> the Libertarian flip-side version of Marxism.
5) “No need to support R&D by the gov’t; all of this will be provided by private industry instead as the need arises.” –> aside from the fact that 90% of research won’t pan out (“if we knew what we were doing we wouldn’t call it research” –Einstein), there’s also the incredible lag times–up to 20 years or more in taking something from basic research level to product. In a world where companies are obsessed with quarterly returns, does anyone think that private companies stepping in will occur to any great extent? In addition, what does this do to the US’s R&D level by comparison to other countries which WILL be using public funds to push their R&D level?
Tim F.
Glenn, thanks for coming by and defending your point. I think it is important to point out that my post is more of a formal argument than I let on. The libertarian position, which certainly includes this point whether or not you intended it, presupposes that informed citizens will make rational decisions. In some cases they have a decent argument, but for prescription drugs that is impossible.
Having informed consumers is nearly impossible. That means that above and beyond the question of whether people are willing to take risks, most will be totally unaware of the risks that they take. Antibiotic resistance is a perfect example, because a single uninformed consumer will endanger every member of society. Similarly few if any lay consumers will be able to understand the constellation of potential interaction dangers.
Even if informed, psychoactive drugs uniquely damage the consumer’s ability to act rationally. Addictive personalities can latch on to anything, but unlike skydiving or cutting oneself a drug like oxycontin will addict everybody who uses it inappropriately. Other medications become effectively addictive because they severely aggravate the condition when usage stops. Every single consumer will become an irrational consumer if the use of certain drugs is not controlled.
metalgrid
On the flip side, a lot of publicly funded research is used in developing medicine by private industry and we the public never see any payoff in terms of price or shorter patent durations.
RareSanity
As a libertarian, I feel it is important to distinguish a libertarian from a anarchist and a “market anarchist”.
An anarchist believes that their should be no government at all and that the natural disposition of humans is to live in peace, or find common ground with each other and that the power of the state only corrupts that nature by putting people “in power” over other people. With the advent of the Patriot Act and other recent government intrusions, a more moderate interpretation of this line of though is, at the very least, interesting.
A “market anarchist” believes that the government should not interfere in the markets. That includes regulation of prescription drugs, or any other regulation. The premise of this line of though is that the markets, left to their own devices will self correct. Meaning, it would not make sense for a company to release an unsafe drug because they would not make money and be sued by victims of its adverse effects. There are some very compelling arguments out there about “market anarchism”. There would still be a government in place that would be responsible for enforcing mutually entered contracts between parties and for arresting, trying, and punishing “criminals”, but for the most part, staying out of the markets. You could argue that the first time that an “unsafe” drug enters the market and it is proven that through reckless disregard for safety and negligence, it caused the death of a person and the CEO of the company is convicted of murder or manslaughter, the amount of unsafe drugs in the market would probably plummet. But the siren song of the truckloads of money to be made with drugs would cause the industry to develop “safe” effective drugs.
A middle of the road libertarian believes that there should be a limited central government that focuses mostly on defense of the national borders. Other laws should be derived from state legislatures because members of those bodies are closer to the people they represent and cannot go “hide” in Washington. They still live in the same neighborhood and have to deal daily with the rewards (or consequences) of their “representation”.
The main tenet in libertarianism is make no law or perform no action that will deprive another of their life, liberty, or property. As far as:
If the drug company releases a drug that is habit forming, but does not state this, then they can (and will) be sued (see tobacco companies) and possibly pursed for other criminal charges. Setting up, again, the benefit of a drug company to reveal possible side effect of a particular drug. If people, knowing the side effect, choose to ingest the drug, and they form an addiction; and if those people commit a crime, depriving someone else of their life(murder), liberty (kidnapping/false imprisonment/hostage taking), or property (theft), they will still be arrested, convicted and punished for those offenses regardless of the catalyst for them committing those offenses.
Hell, guys act irrationally when trying to obtain sex, and women act irrationally when trying to obtain Louis Vuitton purses *smile*. Look at the nut at Virgina Tech, we still don’t know what the hell made him act irrationally.
If we are going to try and outlaw or regulate everything that make a person act irrationally, we all may as well turn Amish and call it a day.
Just my two cents…
chopper
expanding the difference between the legal and medical systems:
attorneys act as advisors because technically everything that an attorney does or files or says in court on behalf of their client could be done by the client themselves if they so chose (i dunno in the case the client is a quasi-‘person’ such as a corporation, but whatever).
doctors, however, perform a number of things that a patient just can’t do. if i have to go to hospital to have an emergency appendectomy, my doctor is performing an advisory role, but he’s also removing my damn appendix, which is something i can’t possibly do myself. i couldn’t remove my own appendix while curled up on my coffee table.
so right from the start we’re seeing that doctors can’t be considered to be only advisors to the patient. yes, maybe in the case of prescribing certain medications one could argue that they should be, but it shows the basic difference between the legal and medical relationships b/w a lawyer/doctor and client/patient.
Pb
I do think that there are some (maybe quite a few) situations nowadays where doctors shouldn’t necessarily have to be involved to get some medications. For example, if you were prescribed some medication for a chronic / permanent condition, and you’ve been taking it for some time — after a certain point, should you still need a doctor to act essentially only as a gatekeeper for the medication that you (and your doctor) already know you need?
Another good example of this would be birth control pills — provided that you didn’t already have an adverse reaction to them in the first place, and given that you probably won’t get much of a follow-up when they get re-prescribed, why do we need to have the doctor in the process again?
On the other hand, there are many controlled substances out there that are tightly controlled for good reason–and yes, Heroin is the classic example, but of course there are all sorts of pharmaceuticals being abused for recreational purposes out there. As for alcohol and tobacco, they certainly can be more dangerous than other substances that are more tightly controlled, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. They are less controlled for historical reasons–much like how aspirin is responsible for more deaths than some other drugs that the FDA ended up banning.
Rome Again
Sexist. I am a woman, and I have never had a Louis Vuitton purse (nor do I ever want one), but I will admit, I have been known to act irrationally when trying to obtain sex if that option is not available from my significant other. ::grins::
RareSanity
Okay…maybe it’s just my wife. :-)
RSA
I’ve run into this argument a number of times (there are a lot of market libertarians online) but I’ve never found it convincing. Yes, in the long run a company producing a bad drug might be driven out of business, but in the short run someone running the company (with limited personal liability, of course) could make a killing so to speak. Being sued by the relatives of victims of adverse effects just doesn’t strike me as a strong deterrent. What have the deliberately deceptive practices of tobacco companies (of a few decades ago, if not today) brought them?
Aj
Many countries have no perscription requirements with only a few exceptions like antidepressants. It seems to work fine,
Krista
Well, there is actually a bit of a good reason for that. Sexually active women are supposed to get Pap tests and pelvic exams every year (or every 2 years if they’re monogamous and have no history of abnormal Paps). So, most doctors will write up a pill prescription for the amount of time allotted until the next Pap, which then means that you have to go to the office to get your pill prescription renewed, at which time they’ll get the Pap and pelvic over with, and will often do a breast exam at that time. If a doctor just prescribed the pill with permanent refills, then women, who often put their own selves last, might not make the time to go in to the doctor for regular checkups and for that vital bit of cancer screening.
Krista
So are you saying that if you ever receive a Louis Vuitton purse as a gift, you’d be happy to part with it? Can I call dibs?
Jake
Interesting. But wouldn’t the libertarian counter that the patient ought to decide if/when she gets a Pap?
Is there a libertarian in the house?
grumpy realist
RareSanity, just substitute “Japanese OLs” for women and you’d be absolutely accurate. (I often wondered whether I would ever run into a secretary in Tokyo who wasn’t lugging one of the things around.)
Andrei
Agreed.
Further, in the current political context, I think people with libertarian tendancies often prefer to play it safe and default to voting for no new laws or have the governments involvement in solving particular cloudy issues. That’s I how I tend to feel these days and I think it’s how you arrive at being fiscally conseravative while also being socially liberal. In this mode of thinking, one needs a verfiable burden of proof that the federal or even state governments have thought the whole thing through and have done so in a way that actually works as it was sold before handing over power to that governing body. (This is often not the case.)
Progressives seem to default to the opposite mode. They seem to want to get the benefits of laws and government behind action to make something happen and move forward or make any progress at all in fixing problems. Generally, this is always with the same intent as libertarians, and that is with the intent to never deny anyone life, liberty or property, but it can happen as progress is always a fuzzy target. This is fine, but it works at the risk of getting ahead of yourself often times, relying on people to self correct as issues come up. In this mode, you’re only as good as your political leaders are honest, imho.
The future I think will be a struggle between libertarian and progressive thinking as it applies to public and foreign policy. I tend to favor libertarian thinking, with a moderate dose of progressive action tossed in to keep myself honest. The big question for me is whether the current, outdated and useless political parties as defined by Democrat and Republican will move towards more libertarian and progressive thinking, or will there be any political will of the people to toss the current partisanship out the door and modernize the system.
Krista
Well, it is still her decision, in a way. She can just as easily go off the pill and use some OTC form of contraception, and she’d never have to see a doctor again. I do think, however, that there is value in not having a permanent prescription. Even if you’re only in there for long enough to renew your prescription, the doctor can at least look at you and possibly slip in a few questions about how you’re feeling. Were I a doctor (as opposed to just playing one), I would feel very, very uncomfortable prescribing anything stronger than vitamins if I knew that the person would be able to take them in perpetuity without ever having to visit a physician ever again.
grumpy realist
Oh, and RareSanity, the fallacies with “market anarchists” is pretty obvious:
1) what happened with GM and the Pinto.
2) long latent periods before the harm of use of the product, by which time the company may have disappeared all together.
3) opportunity costs for the customer (it really is going to do me a fat lot of good if I get a dud “anti-cancer” drug and while waiting around for it to work, my cancer goes terminal.)
3) company doesn’t have enough money to pay the multimillion$ fine for putting out a dangerous product. Tsk tsk, too bad, guess we’ll have to go bankrupt, sorry that we ended up with a product that chopped off your arm.
4) There are certain things that for most people really can’t be made up for by money. Mutilation. Death of family members. Third-degree burns. Blindness. Death.
Andrei
RareSanity wasn’t promoting market anarchism. He was defining it because often times in these sorts of discussions, people conflate market anarchists with middle of the road libertarians.
Andrew
I only carry Gucci.
RareSanity
Yes, this is true. But, this can happen with any product or service AND government regulation can’t guarantee that even with their “standards” an unsafe drug doesn’t make it to market (e.g. Vioxx). Also, using Vioxx as an example, once a drug makes it to the market in the current system, it is already assumed to be safe. The only body that has evaluated this is the government, not like the government hasn’t failed before. :-)
Most people assume that just because the government ceases to provide a particular service that the particular service in question will go away. Let’s give a libertarian, free market example of a new drug trying to come to the market:
Press Release: Drug Company X has announced that their drug Perfectosyn is ready for sale immediately in the US and the world.
Press Release (two days later): Drug Company Y, Drug Company X’s main competitor with their drug Utopias, says that Drug Company X is failing to mention that Perfectosyn is a habit forming narcotic medication, while Utopias is not.
Press Release (day after Drug Company Y’s release): The American Medical Association is recommending that it’s member physicians not prescribe the new drug Perfectosyn due to the lack of information regarding the possible addictive nature of the drug.
Press Release (from Drug Company X): Drug Company X is announcing that it is releasing the results of its internal testing as well as hiring the independent drug evaluation labs of EvaluTech to verify their claim that Perfectosyn is non-addictive.
Press Release (after testing): Drug Company X announces that EvaluTech has deemed Perfectosyn non-addictive.
Press Release: The American Medical Association has decided to remove their objection to the prescription of Perfectosyn due the independent EvaluTech and their own internal evaluations.
Press Release: Drug Company X files charges for slander against Drug Company Y for the false statements made about its drug Perfectosyn. It is seeking damages including missed sales, reimbursement of testing costs, legal fees, and other punitive damages.
Press Release (months later): In a crushing decision by a Federal Court today, Drug Company Y is ordered to pay 100 billion dollars in damages to Drug Company X for slanderous statements made about its new drug Perfectosyn. Drug Company Y not having that much in cash will have to liquidate its holdings to pay the judgment.
Just because the government doesn’t provide a service, doesn’t mean it goes away. In fact, once the government gets “out of the business” of something, it opens up the door for someone else to get “into the business”. And it also opens up competition, how many other “evaluation” labs would crop up if EvaluTech starts making a lot of money? then only the most impartial lab will survive, because any “crooked” labs to get narc’d on by impartial ones.
Just some thoughts. There will never be market anarchy, but you can see that there may be benefits of removing some government from the markets.
RareSanity
grumpy: Just Like Andrei, said, I am not a market anarchist, but I can understand why someone would be.
Andrei: Neither political party will come close to endorsing anything close to libertarianism, because, by definition, they will not actively try and reduce their own power.
The answer is that when everyone gets to the point where it is actually a bad thing to have a D or R attached to their name when trying to get elected. You know, the free market. :-) It hasn’t got painful enough in the body politic for it yet.
RSA
Yes, these are very reasonable thoughts, and in general I think that less government involvement in some areas would probably improve things. There are a couple of practical issues, though. One is why companies like EvaluaTech aren’t already making a killing today. From New Scientist in 2003, for example:
Is government regulation responsible for this situation? I think there are more obvious culprits. Another issue is that it strikes me that an ounce of regulation (properly applied) is worth a pound of litigation. Figuring out how and when to do it right is hard, of course.
Sirkowski
I remember one guy at LewRockewell.com saying he was much happier paying insurrance to the mob than paying taxes.
RareSanity
Because regardless of what a lab might say, the FDA still has to give an okay, so why bother?
Yes, because it is in these “research companies” financial interests to in “slant” their research so companies keep using them. Because as long as the FDA says a drug is safe, it’s going to market with “FDA Approval”. So what motivation does a “research company” have to be impartial if no one cares what their final results are?
In my example, it would be in the company’s financial interest to be impartial, because any evaluation company that was perceived as shady may not get favorable opinions from the medical community. Therefore, if a drug company wanted credibility, they wouldn’t use a company whose impartiality can be questioned. And any drug company that only used “questionable” evaluation labs, probably wouldn’t sell a lot of drug because of a lack of credibility.
Mikkel
I’m a market anarchist in theory (as in if it were implemented ideally then it’d be great and it has a greater chance of a real world ideal implemenation than other ideal solutions) but even if all the politics were resolved there would be some big issues.
The demand for scientists would go up 10 fold…but so would the demand for lawyers; with the latter leading to a rise in psychiatrists as well.
The average person would have to spend about 80% of their day “rationally” weighing all the new choices and conflicting information. “Reading Press Releases” would become the fourth R in school. Since most people I know have a hard time deciding what shaving cream to buy, I’m not sure that we need all this increased information.
As a scientist I’d be happy about the new found importance, but worried that public perception of the field would devolve into “he said/she said” even more than it is now. Also it would encourage bad science by completely obliterating the difference between correlation and causation.
grumpy realist
We also have a good example of (private) evaluation: risk rating of bonds. Done by Moody’s, Fitch, etc.
Has it worked? Well, sorta…..there’s been a lot of complaints about a) the rating agencies parcel up the market (are acting in cahoots with each other, b) the companies that pay more are likely to get better ratings, and c) the rating system doesn’t accurately reflect the risk.
How does one keep the following situation from happening? Company A has medical product, takes it for testing to Company X, offers N millions under the table to slant report on their new medical product. Heck, we’re already seeing problems with bias in outsourced testing.
What amuses me most about Libertarians is their naive assumption that as soon as something moves from being done by the government to being done by the private sector, it automatically moves from being a Bad Thing to a Good Thing. Efficiency somehow magically improves 500 times, and that corruption somehow disappears.
(I also note that very few die-hard libertarians are actual entrepreneurs. Most of them turn out to be lower echelon coders stuck in the bowels of a corporation. The same people that absolutely scream and howl about How The Government Is Oppressing Them will have absolutely nothing against dress codes, drug testing, keyboard-stroke monitoring and video cameras in the hallways—provided it’s their private employer doing it, because “it’s in the contract”. No wonder the answer to our soldiers in Iraq is “but you volunteered!”)
Rome Again
Sure Krista, you’ll be the one I call, k? :)
Jake
Don’t get me wrong, I agree. A new medication might become available that would better treat a patient’s symptoms. Some meds lose their efficacy over time. Some medications have very rare but serious side effects.
I was just trying to get a handle on the libertarian view point. Are all potential risks covered by Caveat Emptor?
jg
Unless we implement tort reform, then they can just factor it into the cost of goods sold.
RSA
Actually I think it’s more complicated than that, in that the biases seem to be pretty subtle. They have to do with negative results being difficult to publish, trials being well designed but aimed at producing significance rather than improvements on best practices, and other issues that I think a lay audience would have a good deal of difficulty understanding. It’s not clear to me that taking government influence out of the picture would do much to improve the situation.
RareSanity
Did the current government lead system stop Vioxx? What about Phen-fen?
Here’s a better explanation, because I see you are having a hard time grasping abstract principles. The first time that Company A’s product causes someone harm with a problem that should have been uncovered during the evaluation stage, Company X loses it’s credibility as an effective evaluator of the safety of new drugs; resulting in either Company X getting its act together and not slanting its results or, less business eventually causing Company X to go out of business.
How many other drugs do you think patients and doctors will trust when Company A and X say it is safe?
What about your naive assumption that the government always knows best? No one said that corruption disappears. But, what happens is that once the government stops providing a service, there are more available funds for a private enterprise to provide that function. More money, means more competition which means more pressure on companies to do a good job, or lose ground to their competitors that are doing the job well.
Oh, and since I never actually played hockey, I should refrain from commenting on it? Since you believe in government AND you are an entrepreneur answer this question for me…
In all of your dealings with government employees, how many of those government employees would you hire to work for you? None. But, these are the same people you trust to implement all of those wonderful regulations you seek?
You are absolutely right, that employee can choose to walk out the door anytime they get ready. And if they choose to complain and not actually do anything about it…well you know the definition of insanity…
Being a libertarian doesn’t mean being an entrepreneur, it means having the freedom and liberty to be whatever you want to be. Who told you that in order to be a “good libertarian” you have to be an entrepreneur?
The last refuge of making a pointless point, an irrational misdirection in the midst of a productive conversation.