I’d question the need to have government involved in the decision at all. Why not let the airlines decide their own security policies?
At least three reasons:
Because airlines have these large objects that can function as missiles and bring down buildings. So failing to secure them harms lots of other people.
As with other industries, individuals do not have the resources to make detailed judgments themselves about safety procedures. This is similar to the need for government inspection and regulation of drugs and food.
Violation of security procedures is (for a variety of good reasons) a criminal offense. In order for that to make any sense, you need the government to have some handle in what procedures do and do not make sense.
The first two reasons only justify requiring that airlines carry liability insurance policies against the external damage that can be caused by by their planes and injuries/deaths of passengers. Then, the insurer would specify what protocols airlines must follow before the insurer will offer an affordable policy. Passengers would not have to make such judgments in that case.
ETA: Actually, you know what? This has devolved into a political debate. Not cool. Can we wind this down? (To avoid the obvious accusation, anyone can feel free to reply to my arguments here and I won’t reply.)
Well, my general approach is to think that we should continue political discussions as long as they are not indicating mind-killing. For example, I find your point about liability insurance to be very interesting, and not one I had thought about before. It is certainly worth thinking about, but even then, that’s a different type of regulation, not a lack of regulation as a whole.
Well, my general approach is to think that we should continue political discussions as long as they are not indicating mind-killing.
If it’s not there in your judgment then, I’ll continue.
For example, I find your point about liability insurance to be very interesting, and not one I had thought about before. It is certainly worth thinking about, but even then, that’s a different type of regulation, not a lack of regulation as a whole.
Yes, but it certainly makes a difference in how many choices and alternatives regulation chokes off. Even if you believe in regulation as a necessary evil, you should favor the kind that accomplishes the same result with less intrusion. And there’s a big difference between “Follow this specific federal code for airline security”, versus “Do anything that convinces an insurer to underwrite you for a lot of potential damages.”
Similarly, when it comes to restricting carbon emissions, it makes much more sense to assign a price or scarcity to the emissions themselves, rather than try to regulate loose correlates, such as banning products that someone has deemed “inefficient”.
If you consider all that obvious, then you should understand my frustration when libertarians have to pull teeth to get people to agree to mere simplifications of regulation like I describe above.
Yeah, no disagreement with those points. (Although now thinking more about the use of insurance underwriting there may be a problem getting large enough insurance. For example, in some areas there have been home insurance companies that went bankrupt after major natural disasters and didn’t have enough money to pay everything out. One could see similar problems occurring when one has potential loss in the multi-billion dollar range.)
One of the oldest reinsurers originally had unlimited liability for members. I think that provides much more effective oversight of risk allocation than any regulation.
I think that provides much more effective oversight of risk allocation than any regulation.
No, it didn’t. Did you miss the part where Lloyds imploded, and the unlimited liability destroyed scores of lives (and caused multiple suicides)? The ‘reinsurance spiral’ certainly was not effective oversight. Even counting the Names’ net worth, Lloyds had less reserves and greater risk exposure than regular corporate insurance giants that it competed with, like Swiss Re and Munich Re.
EDIT: It occurs to me that the obvious rebuttal is that Lloyds was quite profitable for a century or two, and so we shouldn’t hold the asbestos disaster against it. But it seems to me that any fool can capably insure against risks that eventuate every month or year; high quality risk management is known from how well the extremely rare events are handled.
Their liability is still limited by the laws regarding personal bankruptcy. You can’t pay back money you don’t have. (In the old days, there was debtor’s prison, but that really doesn’t help anyone.)
Some libertarians oppose limited liability for shareholders of corporations because it distorts the incentives to reduce the risk of harm to third parties. I tend to lean in that direction although I can see the merit in some arguments in favour of limited liability.
Ah yes, the orthodox doctrine of the Church of Unlimited Government. I’m a heretic and don’t accept any of these as self evident. I find it interesting that it doesn’t even occur to most people to ask the question whether any given issue should even be considered as a legitimate concern of government. From the second link (emphasis mine):
Do you remember the flap recently about the airline that was going to charge for carry-on luggage? And then a Congressman said we need to pass a law saying that the airlines cannot do that? Now, the merits of the issue are debatable (as a passenger, I think I might actually prefer to fly on an airline that charges for carry-on luggage), but that is not the point. Even if we all felt really strongly that charging for carry-on luggage is evil, are we willing to say that government should stay out of the issue, on principle? The libertarian says that indeed the government should stay out of it. The member of the Church does not. Again, being ok with government staying out of it gets you libertarian points only if you care about the issue. If you are ambivalent about charging for carry-on luggage or you think it’s a really minor issue, then it’s not in the set of social problems that you feel are important.
I bring up the carry-on luggage example because to me it illustrates the relative strength of the forces for limited government and the forces for unlimited government. From my standpoint, the idea of regulating the pricing of carry-on luggage is nutty as a fruitcake. But it seemed perfectly normal to most people—certainly to most of our “thought leaders.” It seems to me that I belong to the Dissenting Church, and the established church is the Church of Unlimited Government.
I’m not at all sure what any of this has to do with anything. I agree with the quoted section that having the government step in to regulate how much carryon luggage people can have is an example of people making bad assumptions about government. Indeed, this one is particularly stupid because it is economically equivalent to charging a higher price and then offering a discount for people who don’t bring carryon luggage. And psych studies show that if anything people react more positively to things framed as a discount.
But I don’t see what this has to do with anything I listed. Can you explain for example how the fact that airplanes are effectively large missiles is not a good reason for the government to be concerned about their security? The use of airplanes as weapons is not fictional.
Similarly, regarding my second point are you claiming that people in general do have the time and resources to determine if any given drug is safe or is even what it is claimed to be? I’m curious how other than government regulation you intend to prevent people from diluting drugs for examples.
Edit: And having now read the essays you linked to I have to say that I’m a bit confused. The notion that the US of all countries has a religious belief in unlimited government is difficult for me to understand. The US often has far less regulation and government intervention than say most of Europe. So the claim that the US has a religion of “Unlimited Government” as a replacement for an established religion clashes with the simple fact that many countries which do have established or semi-established religions still have far more government intervention. Meanwhile, it seems that it is frequently politically helpful in the US to talk about “getting the government off of peoples’ backs” or something similar. So how the heck is this a religion in the US?
I’m not at all sure what any of this has to do with anything. I agree with the quoted section that having the government step in to regulate how much carryon luggage people can have is an example of people making bad assumptions about government.
This rather illustrates my point. You can see the lack of justification for a fairly extreme example like the carry on luggage but can’t see how that relates to the question of airline security. From my perspective the idea that government should even be discussing what to do about airline security in the original example is at least as ridiculous as the luggage example is from your perspective.
Can you explain for example how the fact that airplanes are effectively large missiles is not a good reason for the government to be concerned about their security? The use of airplanes as weapons is not fictional.
Airlines already have a strong economic incentive to take measures to avoid hijacking and terrorist attacks, both due to the high cost of losing a plane and to the reputational damage and possible liability claims resulting from passenger deaths and from the destruction of the target. I would expect them to do a better job of developing efficient security measures to mitigate these risks if government were not involved and also to do a better job of trading off increased security against increased inconvenience for travelers. There is absolutely no reason why a potentially dangerous activity necessitates government involvement to mitigate risks.
Similarly, regarding my second point are you claiming that people in general do have the time and resources to determine if any given drug is safe or is even what it is claimed to be? I’m curious how other than government regulation you intend to prevent people from diluting drugs for examples.
You can make the same argument with regard to many goods and services available in our complex modern world. It is equally flawed when applied to drugs as when applied to computers, cars or financial products. There is no reason why government has to play the role of gatekeeper, guardian and guarantor. In markets where government involvement is minimal other entities fill these roles quite effectively.
There is absolutely no reason why a potentially dangerous activity necessitates government involvement to mitigate risks.
Since the italics are yours, I’m going to focus on that term and ask what you mean by necessitate? Do you mean society will inevitably fall apart without it? Obviously no one is going to make that argument. Do you mean just that there are potentially ways to try to approach the problem other than the government? That’s a much weaker claim.
You can make the same argument with regard to many goods and services available in our complex modern world. It is equally flawed when applied to drugs as when applied to computers, cars or financial products. There is no reason why government has to play the role of gatekeeper, guardian and guarantor. In markets where government involvement is minimal other entities fill these roles quite effectively.
Really? Cars are extensively regulated. The failure of government regulation is seen by many as part of the current financial crisis. And computers don’t (generally) have the same fatality concerns. What sort of institution would you replace the FDA with ?
Since the italics are yours, I’m going to focus on that term and ask what you mean by necessitate?
I mean that recognizing the existence of a perceived problem does not need to lead automatically to considering ways that government can ‘fix’ it. Drug prohibition is a classic example here. Many people see that there are problems associated with drug use and jump straight to the conclusion that therefore there is a need for government to regulate drug use. Not every problem requires a government solution. The mindset that all perceived problems with the world necessitate government convening a commission and devising regulation is what I am criticizing.
What sort of institution would you replace the FDA with ?
I’d abolish the FDA but I wouldn’t replace it with anything. That’s kind of the point. People would still want independent assessments of the safety and efficacy of medical treatments and without the crowding out effects of a government supported monopoly there would be strong incentives for private institutions to satisfy that demand. The fact that the nature of these institutions would not be designed in advance by government but would evolve to meet the needs of the market is a feature, not a bug.
I can kind of see how a private company could test and recomend/approve drugs, but what about snake oil sales men. No, this system wouldn’t work at all. To many people would die or be seriously hurt for no reason.
True and they wouldn’t deserve it, but the truth is, there are a lot of really awesome effective drugs that either take forever to get approved, or don’t get approved it at all. This kills people, too.
And there are a lot of diseases, like bronchitis, that are easy for a person to diagnose in themselves, and know that they need an antibiotic, but it costs a hundred dollars to see a doctor to tell him what he already knows so he can get the medicine, and if that’s the difference between him paying the rent or not… and, hypothetically, he dies because it goes untreated.
It’s more a propblem of political viability rather than anything else.
And there are a lot of diseases, like bronchitis, that are easy for a person to diagnose in themselves, and know that they need an antibiotic,
And then they misdiagnose it, and antibiotic resistance increases, and then the antibiotic doesn’t work when they need it. Or they diagnose it but miss a warning sign for another disease that a doctor would have noticed and tested for. No thanks, I’d much rather have people who have gone to medical school for years make that decision.
No thanks, I’d much rather have people who have gone to medical school for years make that decision.
And I’d much rather the decision to trust doctors be made by the people to be affected, rather than politicians (who have not done any school / training in particular).
The “people to be affected” are the general public, who suffer when contagious diseases aren’t treated properly, and the general public makes these decisions through elected politicians. Also, these decisions are frequently based on recommendations by administrators with degrees in Public Health.
Some day I hope someone without an axe to grind does an in-depth study estimating how badly people would be harmed with drug regulation v. without drug regulation. I’ve seen the ‘yeah but regulation causes harms’ versus ‘yeah but non-regulation causes harms’ argument before, but I can’t remember seeing anyone try to rigorously and comprehensively quantify the respective pros and cons of both courses of action and compare them.
Have you looked at the academic studies on the topic? Are these the “axe-grinding” “arguments” that you dismiss? Simple comparisons of the US vs Europe during times when one was systematically more conservative seems to me to be a pretty reasonable methodology, but maybe you don’t consider it “rigorous” or “comprehensive.”
Maybe I’m overdoing the scare quotes, but those words were not helpful for me to identify what you have looked at, whether our disagreement is due to your ignorance or my lower standards.
Have you looked at the academic studies on the topic? Are these the “axe-grinding” “arguments” that you dismiss?
I have not, and my comment was not intended to slam whatever genuinely unbiased academic studies of the topic there are.
My comment’s referring to the times I’ve been a bystander for arguments about the utility of pharmaceutical drug regulation, both in real life and online; a pattern I noticed is the arguers failing to cite hard, quantitative evidence or make an argument based on the numbers. At best they might cite particular claims from think tanks or other writers/groups with a political agenda that would plausibly bias the analysis.
So when I say I’ve seen the argument before, I’m not thinking of the abstract debate over whether what the FDA does is a net good or not, or particular pieces of academic work; I’m thinking of concrete occasions where people have started arguing about it in my presence, and the failure of the people I’ve witnessed arguing about it to present detailed evidence.
I haven’t tried to research the topic in detail, so I don’t know precisely what ground the academic studies cover. At any rate, I didn’t mean to claim knowledge of the field and to imply that there aren’t any. I genuinely do just mean that I haven’t seen them, because laymen (including the parent posters in this subthread, at least so far) don’t mention them when they argue about the issue. As I wrote before, I added the ‘axe to grind’ warning not as a preemptive slam on academics, but because I suspect there have already been some overtly partisan analyses of the subject, and I want to discourage people from suggesting them to me.
Simple comparisons of the US vs Europe during times when one was systematically more conservative seems to me to be a pretty reasonable methodology, but maybe you don’t consider it “rigorous” or “comprehensive.”
In this context, what I mean by ‘rigorously and comprehensively’ is that the analysis should satisfy basic standards for causal inference—all important confounding variables should be accounted for, and so on. For example, it would not be ‘rigorous’ to just collect a list of countries and compare the lifespan of those with an FDA-like administration with those that don’t, because there are almost certainly confounding variables involved, and it’s not clear that lifespan is a suitably relevant overcome variable. We might pick a more suitable outcome variable and use a regression to try controlling for one or two confounders, but we still wouldn’t have a ‘comprehensive’ analysis without a list of all of the significant confounding variables, and a way to adjust for them or vitiate their effects.
One rigorous and comprehensive way to evaluate the question, although not a very realistic one, would be a global randomized trial. We might agree on a set of outcome variables, carefully measure them in every country in the world, randomly assign half the countries to having an FDA and the other half no FDA, and then come back after a pre-agreed number of years to re-measure the outcome variables and check for an effect in the countries with an FDA.
Now of course we don’t have that dataset, so if we want evidence we have to make do with what we have, perhaps by comparing the US and Europe as you mention. That could be a pretty good way to test for a positive/negative effect of drug regulation, or it could be a pretty bad way, but I’d need to hear more details about the precise method to say.
Maybe I’m overdoing the scare quotes, but those words were not helpful for me to identify what you have looked at, whether our disagreement is due to your ignorance or my lower standards.
I’m not sure what you believe we’re disagreeing about. I think you might have gotten the wrong impression of my intentions—I wasn’t trying to score points off RomanDavis or Houshalter or mattnewport or anyone else in this thread, or imply that drug regulation is obviously good/bad and only an axe grinder could think otherwise. At any rate, if you have citations for academic studies you think I’d find informative, I’d like them.
The disagreement was just that you seemed to say (by the phrasing “some day”) that there had not been any good work on the subject.
The only such paper I remember reading is Gieringer. That link is to a whole bibliography, compiled by people with a definite slant, so I can’t guarantee that there aren’t contradictory papers with equally good methodology.
I genuinely do just mean that I haven’t seen them, because laymen (including the parent posters in this subthread, at least so far) don’t mention them when they argue about the issue.
I’m reminded of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, who gives the impression of having fabricated the papers assessing him, but they’re real.
Fair enough. Thanks for the Gieringer 1985 cite; it’s 25 pages long so I haven’t read it yet, but skimming through it I see a couple of quantitative tables, which is a good sign, and that it was published in the Cato Journal, which is not such a good sign. But it’s something!
I had noticed that you said that. I was originally not going to draw attention to the paper’s source, but it occurred to me that someone might then have asked me whether I was aware of the paper’s source, referring to my earlier claim that I wanted to discourage people from offering me overtly partisan analyses. So I decided to pre-empt that possible confusion/accusation by acknowledging the paper’s origin from a libertarian-leaning journal.
Yeah, I was thinking of bringing up examples myself, but because of the various axes involved, bringing one up might not be terrible effective.
Another person (I think it was cousin_it) brought up the idea that it should come down to a bet. If we bet ten dollars, and one of us kept arguing after the evidence was in and the bet was lost all it would come down to is, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”
EDIT:Also someone went and down voted the crap out of me. Who’d I make mad and why?
Yeah, I was thinking of bringing up examples myself, but because of the various axes involved, bringing one up might not be terrible effective.
Yup. I thought of the ‘without an axe to grind’ proviso because I expect some politically-aligned think tanks out there have already published pamphlets or reports arguing one side or the other, but I wouldn’t be inclined to take their claims very seriously.
EDIT:Also someone went and down voted the crap out of me. Who’d I make mad and why?
Yes, it looks like almost all the comments related to the government policy issue got downvoted. This is annoying in that, I at least thought that it was a calm, rational discussion which was showing that political discussion isn’t necessarily mind-killing. I’m particularly perplexed by the downvoting of comments which consisted of either interesting non-standard ideas or of comments which included evidence of claims.
The downvote limit is 4 times your karma yes? So if the total downvote for the thread was around 60 points, the individual would only need to be around 15 karma.
Yes. It was originally equal to your karma but some of us had already spent that many downvotes and the point of the policy wasn’t to stop established users from being able to downvote.
I hope someone without an axe to grind does this; if there are axes involved, its much more likely to turn out supporting whatever the person thought before, i. e. not strongly correlated with how people are hurt or helped by regulation
The FDA doesn’t prevent snake oil salesmen: various kinds of alternative medicine escape regulation. It seems regulation primarily applies to treatments that might actually have a hope in hell of working.
Are you considering the other side of the ledger? The people deprived of potentially life saving new treatments because they have not yet been approved? The innovative new medical companies that never get started because of the barriers to entry formed by the regulatory agencies and the big pharmaceutical companies who know how to navigate their rules? The new treatments for rare diseases that are never developed because the market is too small to justify the costs of gaining regulatory approval? The effective anti-venoms already used successfully in other countries that are not available to treat rare snake bites in the US because FDA approval is too onerous?
The FDA doesn’t even have a perfect track record achieving its stated aims. As with any large government agency, private alternatives would be more cost effective and better at the job.
Alternative medicine used to be much more closely regulated. A lot of these products were more closely regulated until lobbying by the alternative medicine industry lead to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 which made it much harder for the FDA to regulate them.
So how do you feel about the government regulating what credit card issuers or insurers are allowed to offer? I see this as similar to the carry-on luggage issue. I don’t want credit card companies to be allowed to offer misleading rates or unfair policies like paying off the lowest interest rates first. I’m not sure about carry-on luggage, but what about charging for a bathroom? That seems clearly within the scope of legitimate concerns of government, given that air travel is already heavily regulated.
That seems clearly within the scope of legitimate concerns of government, given that air travel is already heavily regulated
This argument doesn’t work. Just because you already have heavy regulation, doesn’t justify having more regulation. Also, many libertarians would say that the solution should be to simply remove much of the heavy regulation of air travel.
This argument doesn’t work. Just because you already have heavy regulation, doesn’t justify having more regulation.
Well, it doesn’t by itself justify more regulation, but it makes additional regulation less burdensome. If trains were not regulated and planes were, it might be reasonable to add regulation of bathrooms to plane regulations, but not to introduce regulation to trains so we could regulate bathrooms.
Also, many libertarians would say that the solution should be to simply remove much of the heavy regulation of air travel.
I think there are some credit card practices that could be framed as fraud (You can change my interest rate without telling me? And without telling me you won’t tell me? Seriously? What the hell?) so the government would have to be involved even in a strict libertarian society, but I never like where this is going.
Libertarianism, as a political concept was an idea invented by David Nolan to suit his political theories. He had a chart, and a quarter of it is various types of libertarians.
If you like more social liberties than the American center, and more economic liberties, and are willing to forgo some amount (even a small amount) of government services and protections to achieve them, then you are some where on that quarter of the map. You don’t necessarily have to be way off in the corner with the anarchists or defend every idea they have.
So basically it all comes down to “Should the government worry about this or not?” Is there any good heuristics or principles for determining wether or not the government should regulate something? I’m not upset at the system for being wrong per se, but I am upset about it being so inconsistent and unreliable.
At least three reasons:
Because airlines have these large objects that can function as missiles and bring down buildings. So failing to secure them harms lots of other people.
As with other industries, individuals do not have the resources to make detailed judgments themselves about safety procedures. This is similar to the need for government inspection and regulation of drugs and food.
Violation of security procedures is (for a variety of good reasons) a criminal offense. In order for that to make any sense, you need the government to have some handle in what procedures do and do not make sense.
The first two reasons only justify requiring that airlines carry liability insurance policies against the external damage that can be caused by by their planes and injuries/deaths of passengers. Then, the insurer would specify what protocols airlines must follow before the insurer will offer an affordable policy. Passengers would not have to make such judgments in that case.
Remember to look for the third alternative!
I don’t understand the point you’re making in 3.
ETA: Actually, you know what? This has devolved into a political debate. Not cool. Can we wind this down? (To avoid the obvious accusation, anyone can feel free to reply to my arguments here and I won’t reply.)
Well, my general approach is to think that we should continue political discussions as long as they are not indicating mind-killing. For example, I find your point about liability insurance to be very interesting, and not one I had thought about before. It is certainly worth thinking about, but even then, that’s a different type of regulation, not a lack of regulation as a whole.
If it’s not there in your judgment then, I’ll continue.
Yes, but it certainly makes a difference in how many choices and alternatives regulation chokes off. Even if you believe in regulation as a necessary evil, you should favor the kind that accomplishes the same result with less intrusion. And there’s a big difference between “Follow this specific federal code for airline security”, versus “Do anything that convinces an insurer to underwrite you for a lot of potential damages.”
Similarly, when it comes to restricting carbon emissions, it makes much more sense to assign a price or scarcity to the emissions themselves, rather than try to regulate loose correlates, such as banning products that someone has deemed “inefficient”.
If you consider all that obvious, then you should understand my frustration when libertarians have to pull teeth to get people to agree to mere simplifications of regulation like I describe above.
Yeah, no disagreement with those points. (Although now thinking more about the use of insurance underwriting there may be a problem getting large enough insurance. For example, in some areas there have been home insurance companies that went bankrupt after major natural disasters and didn’t have enough money to pay everything out. One could see similar problems occurring when one has potential loss in the multi-billion dollar range.)
Reinsurance.
Good point, although again, would then push the regulation back one level to make sure that the insurance companies risk was appropriately allocated.
One of the oldest reinsurers originally had unlimited liability for members. I think that provides much more effective oversight of risk allocation than any regulation.
No, it didn’t. Did you miss the part where Lloyds imploded, and the unlimited liability destroyed scores of lives (and caused multiple suicides)? The ‘reinsurance spiral’ certainly was not effective oversight. Even counting the Names’ net worth, Lloyds had less reserves and greater risk exposure than regular corporate insurance giants that it competed with, like Swiss Re and Munich Re.
EDIT: It occurs to me that the obvious rebuttal is that Lloyds was quite profitable for a century or two, and so we shouldn’t hold the asbestos disaster against it. But it seems to me that any fool can capably insure against risks that eventuate every month or year; high quality risk management is known from how well the extremely rare events are handled.
Issue Status: Closed.
Reason: As Designed.
Their liability is still limited by the laws regarding personal bankruptcy. You can’t pay back money you don’t have. (In the old days, there was debtor’s prison, but that really doesn’t help anyone.)
Some libertarians oppose limited liability for shareholders of corporations because it distorts the incentives to reduce the risk of harm to third parties. I tend to lean in that direction although I can see the merit in some arguments in favour of limited liability.
Ah yes, the orthodox doctrine of the Church of Unlimited Government. I’m a heretic and don’t accept any of these as self evident. I find it interesting that it doesn’t even occur to most people to ask the question whether any given issue should even be considered as a legitimate concern of government. From the second link (emphasis mine):
I’m not at all sure what any of this has to do with anything. I agree with the quoted section that having the government step in to regulate how much carryon luggage people can have is an example of people making bad assumptions about government. Indeed, this one is particularly stupid because it is economically equivalent to charging a higher price and then offering a discount for people who don’t bring carryon luggage. And psych studies show that if anything people react more positively to things framed as a discount.
But I don’t see what this has to do with anything I listed. Can you explain for example how the fact that airplanes are effectively large missiles is not a good reason for the government to be concerned about their security? The use of airplanes as weapons is not fictional.
Similarly, regarding my second point are you claiming that people in general do have the time and resources to determine if any given drug is safe or is even what it is claimed to be? I’m curious how other than government regulation you intend to prevent people from diluting drugs for examples.
Edit: And having now read the essays you linked to I have to say that I’m a bit confused. The notion that the US of all countries has a religious belief in unlimited government is difficult for me to understand. The US often has far less regulation and government intervention than say most of Europe. So the claim that the US has a religion of “Unlimited Government” as a replacement for an established religion clashes with the simple fact that many countries which do have established or semi-established religions still have far more government intervention. Meanwhile, it seems that it is frequently politically helpful in the US to talk about “getting the government off of peoples’ backs” or something similar. So how the heck is this a religion in the US?
This rather illustrates my point. You can see the lack of justification for a fairly extreme example like the carry on luggage but can’t see how that relates to the question of airline security. From my perspective the idea that government should even be discussing what to do about airline security in the original example is at least as ridiculous as the luggage example is from your perspective.
Airlines already have a strong economic incentive to take measures to avoid hijacking and terrorist attacks, both due to the high cost of losing a plane and to the reputational damage and possible liability claims resulting from passenger deaths and from the destruction of the target. I would expect them to do a better job of developing efficient security measures to mitigate these risks if government were not involved and also to do a better job of trading off increased security against increased inconvenience for travelers. There is absolutely no reason why a potentially dangerous activity necessitates government involvement to mitigate risks.
You can make the same argument with regard to many goods and services available in our complex modern world. It is equally flawed when applied to drugs as when applied to computers, cars or financial products. There is no reason why government has to play the role of gatekeeper, guardian and guarantor. In markets where government involvement is minimal other entities fill these roles quite effectively.
Since the italics are yours, I’m going to focus on that term and ask what you mean by necessitate? Do you mean society will inevitably fall apart without it? Obviously no one is going to make that argument. Do you mean just that there are potentially ways to try to approach the problem other than the government? That’s a much weaker claim.
Really? Cars are extensively regulated. The failure of government regulation is seen by many as part of the current financial crisis. And computers don’t (generally) have the same fatality concerns. What sort of institution would you replace the FDA with ?
I mean that recognizing the existence of a perceived problem does not need to lead automatically to considering ways that government can ‘fix’ it. Drug prohibition is a classic example here. Many people see that there are problems associated with drug use and jump straight to the conclusion that therefore there is a need for government to regulate drug use. Not every problem requires a government solution. The mindset that all perceived problems with the world necessitate government convening a commission and devising regulation is what I am criticizing.
I’d abolish the FDA but I wouldn’t replace it with anything. That’s kind of the point. People would still want independent assessments of the safety and efficacy of medical treatments and without the crowding out effects of a government supported monopoly there would be strong incentives for private institutions to satisfy that demand. The fact that the nature of these institutions would not be designed in advance by government but would evolve to meet the needs of the market is a feature, not a bug.
I can kind of see how a private company could test and recomend/approve drugs, but what about snake oil sales men. No, this system wouldn’t work at all. To many people would die or be seriously hurt for no reason.
True and they wouldn’t deserve it, but the truth is, there are a lot of really awesome effective drugs that either take forever to get approved, or don’t get approved it at all. This kills people, too.
And there are a lot of diseases, like bronchitis, that are easy for a person to diagnose in themselves, and know that they need an antibiotic, but it costs a hundred dollars to see a doctor to tell him what he already knows so he can get the medicine, and if that’s the difference between him paying the rent or not… and, hypothetically, he dies because it goes untreated.
It’s more a propblem of political viability rather than anything else.
And then they misdiagnose it, and antibiotic resistance increases, and then the antibiotic doesn’t work when they need it. Or they diagnose it but miss a warning sign for another disease that a doctor would have noticed and tested for. No thanks, I’d much rather have people who have gone to medical school for years make that decision.
And I’d much rather the decision to trust doctors be made by the people to be affected, rather than politicians (who have not done any school / training in particular).
The “people to be affected” are the general public, who suffer when contagious diseases aren’t treated properly, and the general public makes these decisions through elected politicians. Also, these decisions are frequently based on recommendations by administrators with degrees in Public Health.
Some day I hope someone without an axe to grind does an in-depth study estimating how badly people would be harmed with drug regulation v. without drug regulation. I’ve seen the ‘yeah but regulation causes harms’ versus ‘yeah but non-regulation causes harms’ argument before, but I can’t remember seeing anyone try to rigorously and comprehensively quantify the respective pros and cons of both courses of action and compare them.
Have you looked at the academic studies on the topic? Are these the “axe-grinding” “arguments” that you dismiss? Simple comparisons of the US vs Europe during times when one was systematically more conservative seems to me to be a pretty reasonable methodology, but maybe you don’t consider it “rigorous” or “comprehensive.”
Maybe I’m overdoing the scare quotes, but those words were not helpful for me to identify what you have looked at, whether our disagreement is due to your ignorance or my lower standards.
I have not, and my comment was not intended to slam whatever genuinely unbiased academic studies of the topic there are.
My comment’s referring to the times I’ve been a bystander for arguments about the utility of pharmaceutical drug regulation, both in real life and online; a pattern I noticed is the arguers failing to cite hard, quantitative evidence or make an argument based on the numbers. At best they might cite particular claims from think tanks or other writers/groups with a political agenda that would plausibly bias the analysis.
So when I say I’ve seen the argument before, I’m not thinking of the abstract debate over whether what the FDA does is a net good or not, or particular pieces of academic work; I’m thinking of concrete occasions where people have started arguing about it in my presence, and the failure of the people I’ve witnessed arguing about it to present detailed evidence.
I haven’t tried to research the topic in detail, so I don’t know precisely what ground the academic studies cover. At any rate, I didn’t mean to claim knowledge of the field and to imply that there aren’t any. I genuinely do just mean that I haven’t seen them, because laymen (including the parent posters in this subthread, at least so far) don’t mention them when they argue about the issue. As I wrote before, I added the ‘axe to grind’ warning not as a preemptive slam on academics, but because I suspect there have already been some overtly partisan analyses of the subject, and I want to discourage people from suggesting them to me.
In this context, what I mean by ‘rigorously and comprehensively’ is that the analysis should satisfy basic standards for causal inference—all important confounding variables should be accounted for, and so on. For example, it would not be ‘rigorous’ to just collect a list of countries and compare the lifespan of those with an FDA-like administration with those that don’t, because there are almost certainly confounding variables involved, and it’s not clear that lifespan is a suitably relevant overcome variable. We might pick a more suitable outcome variable and use a regression to try controlling for one or two confounders, but we still wouldn’t have a ‘comprehensive’ analysis without a list of all of the significant confounding variables, and a way to adjust for them or vitiate their effects.
One rigorous and comprehensive way to evaluate the question, although not a very realistic one, would be a global randomized trial. We might agree on a set of outcome variables, carefully measure them in every country in the world, randomly assign half the countries to having an FDA and the other half no FDA, and then come back after a pre-agreed number of years to re-measure the outcome variables and check for an effect in the countries with an FDA.
Now of course we don’t have that dataset, so if we want evidence we have to make do with what we have, perhaps by comparing the US and Europe as you mention. That could be a pretty good way to test for a positive/negative effect of drug regulation, or it could be a pretty bad way, but I’d need to hear more details about the precise method to say.
I’m not sure what you believe we’re disagreeing about. I think you might have gotten the wrong impression of my intentions—I wasn’t trying to score points off RomanDavis or Houshalter or mattnewport or anyone else in this thread, or imply that drug regulation is obviously good/bad and only an axe grinder could think otherwise. At any rate, if you have citations for academic studies you think I’d find informative, I’d like them.
The disagreement was just that you seemed to say (by the phrasing “some day”) that there had not been any good work on the subject.
The only such paper I remember reading is Gieringer. That link is to a whole bibliography, compiled by people with a definite slant, so I can’t guarantee that there aren’t contradictory papers with equally good methodology.
I’m reminded of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, who gives the impression of having fabricated the papers assessing him, but they’re real.
Fair enough. Thanks for the Gieringer 1985 cite; it’s 25 pages long so I haven’t read it yet, but skimming through it I see a couple of quantitative tables, which is a good sign, and that it was published in the Cato Journal, which is not such a good sign. But it’s something!
I said my standards were lower. My point was that your original comment could be taken for having read this and dismissed it.
I had noticed that you said that. I was originally not going to draw attention to the paper’s source, but it occurred to me that someone might then have asked me whether I was aware of the paper’s source, referring to my earlier claim that I wanted to discourage people from offering me overtly partisan analyses. So I decided to pre-empt that possible confusion/accusation by acknowledging the paper’s origin from a libertarian-leaning journal.
Yeah, I was thinking of bringing up examples myself, but because of the various axes involved, bringing one up might not be terrible effective.
Another person (I think it was cousin_it) brought up the idea that it should come down to a bet. If we bet ten dollars, and one of us kept arguing after the evidence was in and the bet was lost all it would come down to is, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”
EDIT:Also someone went and down voted the crap out of me. Who’d I make mad and why?
Yup. I thought of the ‘without an axe to grind’ proviso because I expect some politically-aligned think tanks out there have already published pamphlets or reports arguing one side or the other, but I wouldn’t be inclined to take their claims very seriously.
Whoever did it, it’s not just you.
Me too. Around 30 points in around 10 minutes. I’m flattered.
My guess for all this is that someone found the whole conversation off-topic and mind-killing. Which seems to justify downvotes.
Did either of you perhaps post in any of the threads replying to billswift?
Yes. I think someone downvoted extra comments elsewhere for effect based on the magnitude and speed of the karma hit.
Yes, it looks like almost all the comments related to the government policy issue got downvoted. This is annoying in that, I at least thought that it was a calm, rational discussion which was showing that political discussion isn’t necessarily mind-killing. I’m particularly perplexed by the downvoting of comments which consisted of either interesting non-standard ideas or of comments which included evidence of claims.
It must be a relatively high karma user given the fact that downvotes are limited by total karma. Perhaps they’d care to explain themselves.
The downvote limit is 4 times your karma yes? So if the total downvote for the thread was around 60 points, the individual would only need to be around 15 karma.
Yes. It was originally equal to your karma but some of us had already spent that many downvotes and the point of the policy wasn’t to stop established users from being able to downvote.
I’m not sure. I’ve never actually run into it.
I hope someone without an axe to grind does this; if there are axes involved, its much more likely to turn out supporting whatever the person thought before, i. e. not strongly correlated with how people are hurt or helped by regulation
The FDA doesn’t prevent snake oil salesmen: various kinds of alternative medicine escape regulation. It seems regulation primarily applies to treatments that might actually have a hope in hell of working.
Are you considering the other side of the ledger? The people deprived of potentially life saving new treatments because they have not yet been approved? The innovative new medical companies that never get started because of the barriers to entry formed by the regulatory agencies and the big pharmaceutical companies who know how to navigate their rules? The new treatments for rare diseases that are never developed because the market is too small to justify the costs of gaining regulatory approval? The effective anti-venoms already used successfully in other countries that are not available to treat rare snake bites in the US because FDA approval is too onerous?
The FDA doesn’t even have a perfect track record achieving its stated aims. As with any large government agency, private alternatives would be more cost effective and better at the job.
Alternative medicine used to be much more closely regulated. A lot of these products were more closely regulated until lobbying by the alternative medicine industry lead to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 which made it much harder for the FDA to regulate them.
So how do you feel about the government regulating what credit card issuers or insurers are allowed to offer? I see this as similar to the carry-on luggage issue. I don’t want credit card companies to be allowed to offer misleading rates or unfair policies like paying off the lowest interest rates first. I’m not sure about carry-on luggage, but what about charging for a bathroom? That seems clearly within the scope of legitimate concerns of government, given that air travel is already heavily regulated.
This argument doesn’t work. Just because you already have heavy regulation, doesn’t justify having more regulation. Also, many libertarians would say that the solution should be to simply remove much of the heavy regulation of air travel.
Well, it doesn’t by itself justify more regulation, but it makes additional regulation less burdensome. If trains were not regulated and planes were, it might be reasonable to add regulation of bathrooms to plane regulations, but not to introduce regulation to trains so we could regulate bathrooms.
Fair enough.
I think there are some credit card practices that could be framed as fraud (You can change my interest rate without telling me? And without telling me you won’t tell me? Seriously? What the hell?) so the government would have to be involved even in a strict libertarian society, but I never like where this is going.
Libertarianism, as a political concept was an idea invented by David Nolan to suit his political theories. He had a chart, and a quarter of it is various types of libertarians.
If you like more social liberties than the American center, and more economic liberties, and are willing to forgo some amount (even a small amount) of government services and protections to achieve them, then you are some where on that quarter of the map. You don’t necessarily have to be way off in the corner with the anarchists or defend every idea they have.
So basically it all comes down to “Should the government worry about this or not?” Is there any good heuristics or principles for determining wether or not the government should regulate something? I’m not upset at the system for being wrong per se, but I am upset about it being so inconsistent and unreliable.
A good heuristic is “no it shouldn’t”. Whether there are any exceptions to this rule is an open question.