Legalization of Drugs

[Hogeye]

I said fully fund, not over fund - and it is very possible to determine what is fully funded - enough money to hire enough trained people to do the job.

But "do the job" is not only amazingly fuzzy, but has the problem I already cited - if the plan is flawed, if it simply doesn't work, then statists can simply claim that it there wasn't enough money thrown at it to "do the job." It's totally open-ended and lacks any criteria of failure whatsoever.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

The job of inspecting meat is not fuzzy. Nor is the job of inspecting any other food, drink, cleaning product, building, or process that effects the health and safety of the populace. People in general do not have the time, knowledge, nor access to be able to do so themselves, and have thus "hired" their government to do it for them. Granted that education gets fuzzy because different people/groups have different ideas of what educated means, but that's no reason to restrict funding to the extent of insufficient teachers and unsafe buildings.

[Hogeye]

Inspecting meat is less fuzzy than most government projects. But it could be done better (and without aggression) by voluntary means (voluntary certification) than by government aggression. "People in general do not have the time, knowledge, nor access to be able to do so themselves" as you say. But please don't fall for the fallacy of govt solipotence again! Certification by something analogous to Underwriters Laboratories would be better, and not necessitate aggression.

I can imagine an alternate history, where Upton Sinclair wrote a muckraking book about unsafe machines rather than food processing. Today, there would be an ultra-efficient Underwriters Food Labs, that kept people safe from shoddy food. And the computer revolution would have never happened, being retarded and prevented by the MAA - the government Machine and Appliance Administration.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

You have a vivid, if peculiar, imagination. The fact that the industry was NOT self polcing is why Sinclair wrote the book in the first place.