rilezg's comments

Grocery stores are incentivized to sell as much food as possible, which does not align with keeping their customers as healthy as possible.

But, assuming altruistic grocers, it would be interesting to see how they decide what food to steer people towards. Would I have to share my medical records and height/weight/exercise routine or would they personalize based on something else?

Everyone is rational based on their understanding of the world, but no one has perfect understanding of everything.

That is many big words to be so blind. A big brain does not make a person immune to poverty or war. If a person does not believe maximizing economic growth (as measured by GDP and/or the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average) is the most holy of missions, then I suppose their genetics are just too impure.

I am not a serious wrestler, but I do not want the government instituting genetic programs as a final solution to a perfect society.

Could you elaborate? I'm not sure how calling an idea 'detached from reality and actively harmful' and then vaguely referencing a different social media platform contributes anything.

Economics may be the most elaborate in manipulating mediocre data to support a hypothesis, but it is important to remember how incredibly easy it is to be wrong or mislead others when using data and complex statistical methods.

I hard disagree. Economics (of any flavor) is as soft as any other social science. The field of economics can be a useful lens to help one understand the world and human behavior, but it relies too much on human behavior to be consistently testable in the same way as 'Hard Science'.

I don't agree that it depends on the news source. The problem is consuming media and not acting on it. A person can use social media to inspire real positive change in their behaviors and their life, and a person can read in-depth, well-written articles about atrocities happening half-way around the world and just end up feeling powerless and depressed.

I would say that interacting with the physical world/people is much richer and more fulfilling than social media (or any other media). Being aware of 'the world & big matters' does not make a person good or interesting. What really matters is not what media a person consumes (or does not consume), but what they do.

I think many people want to spend less time consuming media ('social' or otherwise) and more time interacting with the physical world/people. But it is difficult to do that these days because there is endless attention-grabbing media to consume and that is what it feels like everyone else is doing so it becomes the default.

For me it includes HN.

I, as an individual citizen of these United States of America, hereby grant power to all the various regulatory agencies. There, it has been done, for better or for worse.

More seriously though, I do not know how to bridge the gap between us. We clearly have wildly different beliefs, and our languages differ too much. I wish you the best of luck in the world where government is the root of all evil, for I cannot join you there.

My mistake. The press release is actually from the USDA, and this is the only mention of the FDA:

>USDA has been working closely with FDA to ensure program participants and stakeholders have the information they need to keep infants safe

I apologize for any confusion.

>You're solution amounts to imprisoning or punishing companies for pursuing their economic interests.

Yes, I am so glad you understand. When 'economic interests' of a business run counter to 'societal interests' because of trivialities like pollution or contamination of infant formula leading to death, then society, using government, enacts regulations so that the harmful action is no longer in the 'economic interest' of the business because if the business takes that action then they will be punished.

>No one's rights are being taken away when a company chooses to trade/build in another country

That depends heavily on that country's stance on human rights.

What I am saying is that in order for regulations to NOT cause businesses to 'vote with their feet and their wallets', we must also enact trade policies so that it is NOT cheaper for businesses to seek the laxest regulation (i.e. enforce tariffs for the difference in cost).

If we do not care enough about the regulation to have a tariff, then the regulation should not exist.

>You phrase your statement as though regulations are a naturally occurring substances rather than wishful and often violent mandates of government that they are.

Lol, what is this even? I'll bite though. Regulations are naturally occurring insofar as any other human invention is naturally occurring. All laws are regulations on behavior, and all laws are wishful. There is still murder even though we have laws against shooting people. For me, at least, that is not a reason to do away with laws, but to each their own.

Although the linked article does not address it, the FDA is certainly working to mitigate any fallout from the plant closure. Much of the complexity is that WIC is administrated at the state level, so the FDA must work with each state individually to address the shortage.

Of particular note: >more infant formula has been produced in the last four weeks than in the four weeks that preceded the recall, despite one of the largest infant formula production facilities in the country being offline during that time.

https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2022/05/13/usda-co...

This is incredibly short-sighted and ignorant of any externalities. We lost American manufacturing not because of regulation, but because of trade policies that allowed global corporations to avoid those regulations and profit by outsourcing manufacturing to countries with laxer regulations.

I do not want 'America's entrepreneurs' to start producing infant formula without any safeguards. That is recipe for disaster.

WIC eligibility can vary by state, but is between 100% and 185% of the federal poverty level (I spot-checked a few states, and all I saw was 185%). 185% comes to ~$50k per year for a family of 4. And most people have children relatively young, which usually means they aren't earning a ton of money.

This is the sort of program that I'd rather 'too many' people be eligible for than exclude anyone who might be helped (it is not just about adequate nutrition, but also providing information on healthy eating and referrals to health care).

>I think they would find neighbors very welcoming - even the toughest cities and neighborhoods are mostly friendly people - but the culture would be unfamiliar and the newcomer would have to adjust.

Sure, I agree, with emphasis on the newcomer adjusting.

>I'm not sure where that is in many cities, other than suburbs. You can't escape the richness of large cities.

To clarify, I just mean locations that attract people of a wide variety of backgrounds. That is not to say those locations are 'un-rich' or anything. I just mean that interactions there are governed more by mainstream American culture than by anything specific to that city or neighborhood or the people involved.

As a counterpoint, an outsize proportion of mass media is produced by relatively-not-poor people who live in cities, many of whom are transplants. As such, that is the dominant perspective.

But I certainly agree that mass media does not understand or address the richness of life in cities (or anywhere else).

This article is a summary of a different article: https://capitolism.thedispatch.com/p/americas-infant-formula...

It seems odd that the posted article ignores how WIC contracts are distorting the market and encouraging a monopoly and instead jumps on over-regulation being the problem. It sure seems like those contracts should either not be exclusive or should require suppliers to demonstrate supply resiliency in the face of a single factory failure.

Sure, but a hammer is both simpler and much more reliable than a phone. My point is that it is meaningless to compare items with completely different functions (I would say apples and oranges, but it is more like apples and rocks).