Rand Paul is a libertarian who wants small gov’t. I was just thinking if you reduce the size of gov’t who will takes its place to keep track of people/companies and how will they do it and keep them from running amok? He also said leave certain issues up to the states, but the states of their gov’t also, so reduce the size of the state gov’t?
Posted Jan 23, 2016, 12:46 AM UTC
Small government. Not no government. Yes, libertarians want smaller state governments too.
Well, I think you need to define what small government means? Does it mean less government workers? About 1% of the US works for the government. Reducing the size of government that way will certainly increase the unemployment rate dramatically.
Or do you mean, doing away with government programs. Like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and/or the Military. That takes up most of government spending. Repubs are talking about INCREASING Military spending. You can't cut off people's social security that they've paid into all these years. Can't get rid of Medicare/Medicaid, so hard to reduce government that way.
The only way out is to increase revenue. Through increased taxation. That could be reducing loopholes, that could be tax hikes, that could be stimulation of the economy. The reason Clinton years was so good was because of all the tax revenue generated by speculative silicon valley stock options.
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"Running amok?"
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What happens if the company goes bankrupt before it can pay out claims? Wouldn't there just be a huge incentive to limit liability by structuring shell corporations that would fail in the case of any lawsuit? Also, I think these lawsuits would be tremendously expensive and harmful to the economy. The FDA has made mistakes sometimes and we find out sometimes that there are harmful effects to drugs we never forsaw. But the fact that there's a standardized federal body regulating drugs and determining their safety goes a long way. I think if every pharma company had its own standards it would be a legal nightmare determining if they did their due diligence anytime something went wrong.
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So if the business goes bankrupt the shareholders go to prison unless they can pay? Sounds like that kind of business atmosphere would kill innovation and destroy the economy.
There are plenty of regulatory bodies that exist because the industries wanted them to exist. Sticking with healthcare, the American medical association licenses doctors and exists because doctors wanted something easy to differentiate themselves from quacks without patients having to do arduous research.
Seeing as the FDA is directly responsible for many seemingly safe, and many more simply ineffective, drugs from hitting the market, I feel perfectly comfortable saying that your last statement is totally wrong.
Yeah, I worked at a company that had in house inspectors. When we tested product and it didn't meet spec, the boss would tell us to ship it anyways. His reasoning was that if it was really bad, the buyer would find it and kick it back. Sure we were liable if something went wrong and the buyer shipped assemblies with bad parts, but tort doesn't bring back the dead or repair families destroyed by greed. Now, that's how things went before the modern FDA too. Workers sick with typhoid? Replace them when they die, but until then, we need to ship that mystery meat! Hey, buy this tincture for your ills. Ingredients not listed: lead, opoids, or whatever filler is cheap and keeps people buying.
But... "you can sue the snake oil salesmen if your kid dies".
How could anyone fault that philosophy?
Anecdotes are anecdotal. There are also plenty of anecdotes of FDA corruption and delay that has resulted in death and protectionism of industry.
You must demonstrate that the FDA actually produces a substantial net benefit. Your intuitions aren't enough. That your imagination is cynical toward the market and optimistic toward regulation should not be the basis on which you make policy judgments.
Regulation acts to limit liability, thereby spurring innovation. This is why tech companies are currently lobbying for driver-less car regulations. The potential liability is too high for products to come to market right now. Sure, regulation can go too far, but at it's best it's superior to lawsuits.