[dstorrs]

Let me preface this by saying that I'm actually pretty much onboard with a lot of the Libertarian policies that I've heard. Like anything, of course, I think it can be taken too far. So, when you ask for a "very specific example", this is the sort of thing that comes to mind:

- City governments have health inspectors that check local restaurants, and food-product companies to ensure they are using good ingredients, that the equipment is clean, etc. In a libertarian world (at least, certain versions of one) this practice would not exist. Now think what happens when a Monsanto executive realizes that paying the occasional legal suit is cheaper than keeping their packing plants clean and disease-free.

[ac132]

I was in china for a month and had a great time eating at local restaurants that weren't monitored by health inspectors.

Most of the developing world does not have health inspectors monitoring restaurants because it's not that important of a thing to do.

The lack of food regulations in China made it possible for lots of amazing restaurants to exist because local people don't worry about regulations. If they want to sell you food, they just do it. Somehow, society manages to exist in this manner and it's actually quite nice.

[astrodust]

In China far more people die from eating food laced with toxins than do in countries with food inspectors.

Your argument is totally absurd.

So many people in Africa are dying of AIDS, malaria, and other diseases that have long been cured in western society, near apocalyptic levels of death by European standards, yet the population is growing and commerce is going on. Are you suggesting that this situation is "quite nice"?

When you eat at a restaurant that isn't expected you'll probably live, but if you die you'll just be a statistic. Is that any way to run a society?

[robrenaud]

I have one Chinese friend who married a Chinese American and had a child with her. He then got a job opportunity in Shanghai and took it, leaving her in the US with the child because the food safety is so bad in China. Knowing nothing about the particulars of food safety in China, I thought this was insane. I brought it up to two other Chinese born coworkers, and they thought it was reasonable to raise the child in the US because of food safety concerns.

Briefly searching around the net, the food safety in China does seem very scary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/18/opinion/chinas-corrupt-foo...

[mkr-hn]

Spotty enforcement isn't the same as lack of regulation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_safety_in_the_People%27s_R...

[rayiner]

My family hails from a developing nation. People get sick eating restaurant food all the damn time.

[snitko]

When you tackle a certain problem and try to apply a libertarian framework to it, odds are you have to check if it's an implicit monopoly that you're dealing with and go from there.

In your particular example you're dealing with a city government monopoly for health inspection. It's not free and is paid by citizens in the form of taxes. If there was no government and citizens believed it is in their interest to have such an inspection, surely you'd have at least one, but possibly two or more competing with each other and financed by consumers voluntarily. When you have a government, what you have is a monopoly which is, apart from all other evils of monopoly, much more vulnerable to corruption. If a government official is bribed and it is revealed, he may go to jail, but the agency itself stays in business. Which means it has almost no incentive whatsoever to prevent corruption among its employees.

Finally, government doesn't really ask people if they need such an inspection after all and if yes, how thorough the inspectors should be: maybe businesses in this town are exceptionally honest, or maybe, on the other hand, they are exceptionally sloppy. So what you have with a government in place is a monopoly which business operations are based not on the actual demand for its services, but rather on some metrics that government officials came up with, which may or may not be useful.

[ThomPete]

Libertarian belief system fails because it bases it's ideology around the idea of ownership.

You explain the problem pretty well yourself when you say that we have to think in the framework of libertarianism.

Thats like saying you will believe in Jesus once you let him into your heart.

[rayiner]

Man, isn't it easy to explain things in a world where there are no transaction costs, no information asymmetries, no externalities, and no collective action problems?

[praxeologist]

>Now think what happens when a Monsanto executive realizes that paying the occasional legal suit is cheaper than keeping their packing plants clean and disease-free.

The maximum allowable punishments under libertarian law would be very harsh. Endangering swaths of people's lives could result in that executive's death. It wouldn't be just a matter of paying off a small bribe. For details on the theory of proportionality, see this PDF from page 12 especially: http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/b...