Re-examining the FDA

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The profit maximization objective is not the right tool to decide what ride is safe for my child,


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Why don't you decide what is safe for your child?


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I usually do. But when I want some technologically adnaced product, such as a drug, I must rely on the opinion of experts, people such as chemists, biologists, doctors, etc. I'm neither. Even if was, I could not realistically conduct a one-man research amongst experts for every drug I want to give to my child, so I am relying on the opinion of those experts, more or less on blind faith. ("More or less" because a modicum of research usually goes on, as with most people in such situations. We try our best to do the best for ourselves and our kin.)

And I'd rather rely first on the opinion of people (such as the people who allow the drug in the market, in the first place) who do NOT stand to gain if drug XYZ is a best seller, than otherwise. A simple matter of getting the priorities right - and working for me.


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...who is qualified to fly an airplane...


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Don't fly on a plane with poorly qualified pilots. I have a feeling that imcompetant piloting would get some costly bad reviews rather quickly.


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The process of weeding out the qualified from the unqualified -and identifying the so 'n so qualified- would involve a serious cost in human health and lives. Especially if we'd want to get statistically significant about it.

(The mobsters have a say, presumably, that goes "If there is any doubt, there is no doubt". But would we want to praise or condemn someone on the basis of a few trials? Therefore, we'd need a lot of accidents before we'd stop doing business with an airline or fly with a certain pilot. If he'd survive, that is.)


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...or which car has priority in an intersection...


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Right, because you assume incorrectly that private roads would be unregulated. You don't think there's a demand to enforce some basic safe driving laws, if they are in fact a problem?


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LOL. Again with the "privatize-all-roads" obsession! You must be assuming that every private owner of those private roads will have the same rules and regulations and signs across the country.

Anyway, nothing personal but I do think this is a pretty idiotic argument in the first place. I cannot argue with a straight face the viability of private roads everywhere. Flashes of a Three Stooges sketch. Sorry.


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The functionality of Soviet Communism was to create a welfare state to establish equality and eventually provide peace and happiness in the Marxist utopia.


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Anyone who suggests the mere notion of organising something as a society is accused of totalitarian leanings by "anarcho"-capitalists. How boring this becomes, after a while.


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The ... FDA [is] run by human beings; fallible, and easily corruptible ... What are their incentives to provide a careful service? Good will? HAH!


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I'd assume (I'd concede, if you want) that the primary objective of any organisation, and espcially of a bureaucratic, hierarchical organisatiion, is to perpetuate itself, i.e. the equivalent of the reproduction instinct in living beings. So, yes, the FDA, like most aforesaid organisations, first and foremost would want the necessity of its existence continuously affirmed and strengthened. Which would affect its overall work, in some way, one supposes.

Still, and that's the significant difference, such a motive pales in comparison to the importance of the motive behind the private organisation putting out its products (drugs): that organisation's sole objetive is profit maximization. Apparently, people have wisely decided to check that motive, as best as they could, through the creation of social woking agencies such as the FDA.

I'd vote for the FDA to be re-organised, overhauled, whatever, but I would not vote to do away with the FDA.