Saturday, 07 March 2009
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A Crazy Liberal Idea
I've been hearing and reading a lot of commentary quoting Ronald Reagan's line, "Government can't solve the problem, government IS the problem."
And I've been thinking about that.
Hang in there because we have to go back to August 2007 for the beginning of this train of thought. Remember the "Salmonella in Spinach" scare? I remember it because my sister was one of the people who ate the tainted spinach and almost died of e coli poisoning.
Okay that's the middle of the train. Here comes the engine:
Upton Sinclair. In 1906 Upton Sinclair wrote "The Jungle". He intended the book to shock America with it's graphic depiction of the struggles of poor working class people. Sinclair's childhood was a constant juxtaposition of extremes. His alcholic father kept the family in constant povery, but he also had wealthy grandparents with whom he spent a great deal of time. There was no middle ground, it was either feast or famine.
He became convinced that unchecked Capitalism would invariably lead to inhumane working conditions for wage earners. His convictions and concerns brought him to write The Jungle in order to expose the middle classes to what their fellow human beings were experiencing just a street or two away. He wrote of life in poverty, job insecurity, unfair and low wages, and unsafe working conditions. But when America read the book, instead of finding compassion for the workers, the country found ... rat sausage. If there's ever been a moment of collective national nausea, 1906 was it. Sinclair said, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."
We discovered that mouse droppings, chopped rat, body parts of the workers, and in at least one instance an entire human being unfortunate enough to fall into a rendering vat were ground up and packaged as food for human consumption. Within months of the book's publication Theodore Roosevelt authorized the Food and Drug Administration to conduct regular inspections of food and drug production companies.
Big Business hated the FDA. They cried that the markets should be left alone because competition and the discernment of consumers would eventually regulate the businesses because of course no one would buy rat sausage if they knew that's what it was. But here's what made Roosevelt persevere in spite of the outcry, the average consumer couldn't see, and didn't know what was going into the products being sold, so the mechanism of the free market was not enough to protect the public interest. It was sound business for the meat packing companies to behave the way they did because they mazimized their profits which is the entire goal of business. That's the private side. But on the other hand the public has a right to the information it needs to make good decisions about the products being sold in our markets.
Today some of the "talk" I hear on the airwaves and in the office is an oft repeated line that Government should stay out of business lest it mess things up when it tries to become involved. One of the mantras I hear is that things become more expensive, less efficient as a result of Government involvement. On the other hand there is the question of whether I want to be sold rat sausage. I rely upon government inspectors to make sure that the food I'm buying is safe. I rely upon banking regulators to make sure that the financial products offered don't have hidden poison designed to leech money from my pocket in excess of what I knowingly agree to pay. I rely upon an entire infrastruction of inspection and regulation that I believe will protect me from such nasty surprises.
But from the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and coming forward, the number of people hired for inspection and regulation has been slashed dramatically. Since 1972 the number of FDA inspections has fallen by 80%. The number of inspectors employeed by the FDA has been cut 12 in the past 5 years. With inadequate government resources to inspect the food, industries have hired private firms to fill in the gap. And how's that working for you?
June 07 e coli in beef
August 07 e coli in spinach
Sept 07 e coli in ground beef
Oct 07 salmonella in chicken and turkey pot pies
Dec 07 listeria bacteria in milk products
April 08 salmonella in jalapenos
(and lets not forget the "stay away from the tomatoes, oh, just kidding it wasn't the tomatoes after all" decision that led to tons of tomatoes being left to rot in the fields)
Most recently in the headlines salmonella in peanuts shipped by the Peanut Corp of America.The workers in the Peanut Corp of America plant have testified that they regularly saw mice, rats, roaches, and mold. But just months before the outbreak which has killed 9 people and sickened about 20,000 others, that plant was judged to have a Superior Level of Food Safety.
Judged by the FDA? Nope. Judged by a private for profit firm hired by the industry. Does that seem like a good idea to you? Anyone? Wanna bet that the days of rat sausage are behind us?
The next time someone at the watercooler lets off a little steam about the evils of government regulation, you might want to point out that the lack of regulation is what leads to companies selling us products that make us sick, kill us, or cause us to lose our homes. I know it's just a crazy whacko tree-hugging Liberal thing to say, but I'm in favor of a little more regulation, thanks.
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Comments (183)
great thoughts!!!
I favor an eclectic government, regulations when we need it whether the food industry, banking or whatever. Even today I am sure that "we" have enough to eliminate poverty if we would commit to do it.
@Ikwa - thank you for your recommendation!
Fantastic, and fantastically written, as usual.
Without someone to look out for everyone, the greed mongers would do us all harm and get away with it...which they just did in eight years of rampant lets take the money and run. Only I hope wherever they go it catches up to them in shark feasting karma
The trick is to know when we need more government regulation, and when we need less. It's all about balance, ain't so?
Here from GReggo's rec and I will rec too. This is exactly the idea I've been trying to put together in my own head, but you've done it so well here. When I managed a restaurant, if I thought the district manager was due for a visit I might run around with a broom etc. a little more than I would normally, but I never, never let the food get below (or above) it's safe temperature. I did that for altruistic reasons too but mostly because that health inspector would surprise us several times a year and the last thing I wanted was a poor score (which we had to post in the restaurant). I was much more afraid of that $30K a year health inspector than I was of the $100K DM! I could schmooze my way out of almost any problem with a customer, but I couldn't fool the health inspector. She was the one that kept my restaurant honest.
I was a good, honest, kind-hearted, conscientious guy, but we all needed that threat of health inspection to stay sharp. There's a balance needed, sure, but let's err on the side of too safe, imho.
Great entry!
Wow, I didn't know about all the cuts in FDA inspectors. Great post, and very informative.
I completely agree with you in theory. However, government officials can be just as corrupt and unaccountable as for-profit regulators.
Definitely has given me something to think about. Thanks for the great post.
great post. If you go through and replace the words "rat sausage" in that paragraph with "shitty loans" you've got the cause of the banking crisis in there too.
Very good points. I agree that government regulation is necessary for big business. It's been stated so often that their only responsibility is to deliver a profit to their shareholders. With that mentality, how can we trust them to regulate themselves?
Haha, interesting post.
Don't forget about pet food! One of my cats died because someone at the factory was intentionally poisoning the food.
Very informational post - thank you for shedding a little more light on this problem.
very, very true. basic regulation is key to a safe society. i understand that real problems do emerge when governments try to meddle with economics, but sometimes it really can't be helped. Business is ultimately about increasing profit and little else, and if unregulated this tends to involve a lot of destruction to our land, air, water, food, homes, etcetera.
A very liberal idea in the first place. Good post!
Regulation as it pertains to food safety is all well and good - but how far do we allow ourselves to be regulated?
In our schools? In our homes?
In our minds?
There's a breaking point and we're just hurtling towards it without any reservation.
And no one seems to care.
great post! hey, my friend Ikwa was first! yay... and you look like you could/should be a friend of mine.
Is it another crazy liberal idea to leave parts of a quote off, of is that just something every one does? "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."
You are completely right, though I must argue that this is not really such a huge liberal idea. First we have to admit that liberal and conservatives in the Government are not black and white. One of Reagan few mistakes was the one you've mentioned here. Also, you may have thought Bush was conservative but in fact he was one of the most liberal presidents when it comes to spending. But in general, liberals call for more government (i.e. the government must control your life & build up the economy, somehow), and conservatives call for less government (i.e. you control your life and the private sector builds the economy up). This idea that the government regulates stuff like food safety is actually more conservative. If it was liberal then the government would be regulating, plus telling you who to hire, how to spend your money, and then taking half of it from you.
I actually agree, but it's not an entirely liberal idea. That's just common sense, and is why we need government instead of being an anarchy. And I'm very anti-big government. It's just that when government becomes TOO big that it's a problem, and lately it's been big in places it shouldn't, and not big enough in places it should.
That's the problem here.
Oh yeah. If you're looking for a more modern example of corporations valuing their profit over their employees, look into the vinyl chloride conspiracy that went on from the 1950's to the 1980's. It was used to make various kinds of plastic. All the companies involved knew that it was deadly carcinogen and most of their workers wound up dead from different cancers - but they made a secrecy pact prohibiting any of them from revealing the information to the government. Instead, they involved some researchers into said secrecy pact, told them what kind of outcome they wanted from a study - namely, that it was harmless - and had researchers essentially draw up a sham study to conclude for decades that this was a completely safe chemical.
It's utterly despicable because they knew, right from the beginning, that it was highly toxic, and yet exposed employees to it regardless - for decades!-David