- cross-posted to:
- whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works
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Regulations are written in blood
But I’m an alpha man child and I need to make people bleed to prove it!
To continue with the argument of “the market will self-regulate and people wouldn’t buy that brand anymore so they would never do it again”
Okay but how many people died, how many people are suffering long-term effects, and what’s stopping them from adding a different deadly thing to our food?
wouldn’t buy that brand anymore so they would never do it again
Assuming there is perfect information in the market. In reality there is heavy information asymmetry.
It also assumes free competition while we have every market dominated by a few players buying up everyone else, often with cartel like behavior.
It also assumes it is immediately deadly poison, and doesn’t do something like cause early dementia 25 years later.
It also assumes the masses behave rationally, which they won’t ever.
We’ll just get the cheapest shit with the limited information we are given, unless it is life-or-death, where we will pay any price out of fear.
And also they’re already basically Monopolies. You don’t have real options. Most food products come from like 3 mega corps who own hundreds of brands.
To continue with the argument of “the market will self-regulate and people wouldn’t buy that brand anymore so they would never do it again”
Turns out the parent company owns every other brand of that product, so going to another brand is meaningless
Also, if you want inspections to make sure there isn’t bird shit in the milk, then you need regulation. Otherwise people are just drinking bird shit and they don’t know.
Also the evidence shows this isn’t really true, anyway.
Market self regulation assumes informed consumers that are smart enough to know what things mean. Also it assumes healthy competition and companies that are competing to make the best product at the chrapest price. It ALSO assumes brand lotalty isn’t a thing, and consumers are judging things purely objectively.
Like, i understand the idea, but in practice there are a ton of caveats.
Market self regulation assumes informed consumers that are smart enough to know what things mean
Not just smart enough, but informed enough. That means every person spending literally hundreds/thousands of hours per week researching every single aspect of every purchase they make. Investigating supply chains, performing chemical analysis on their foods and clothing, etc. It’s not even remotely realistic.
So instead, we outsource and consolidate that research and testing, by paying taxes to a central authority who verifies all manufacturers keep things safe so we don’t have to worry about accidentally buying Cheerios that are laced with lead. AKA: The government and regulations.
Most US foods produced under their ‘regulations’ are forbidden in EU.
And for good reason.Now it’ll be 10x worse. Just don’t eat here and don’t buy food from USA. I say this as an American. We are fucked.
Surely you could’ve come up with a better example.
Chalk is just calcium carbonate. Modern medicine uses calcium carbonate to as a calcium supplement.
We are still adding things to milk. Any milk that’s “calcium fortified” or “extra calcium”, and a lot of nut-milks, have calcium carbonate as an ingredient to this day.
I mean, I get your point…honestly, I do…but it’s coming across nearly as the same sort of anti-science drivel you’d expect from the counterargument.
In your examples you know those things are being added to the milk because it’s in the ingredients, the case OP mentioned you didn’t know. Are you able to see the difference?
And there were many other things added to food besides chalk
Exactly. There are better examples. Chalk is a bad one because it is, technically, edible, and still being used as an additive to this day.
Chalk in OP’s example was being added without people’s knowledge, it doesn’t matter how inoffensive it is. How hard is it to grasp?
Because people are dumb. Chalk is in milk, now, right on the label…even marketed as a feature. I’ve got two bottles of alt-milk in my fridge now, store-brand Almondmilk and Planet Oat. Both list chalk as the second ingredient.
But if you tell that to any random schmuck they either won’t believe you or they’ll be disgusted. And then probably keep drinking it anyway.
And that’s with the information right there on the label.
I’m not trying to downplay the example, but there were far worse atrocities fixed by regulations.
You seem to be going in circles and ignoring my comments.
Ditto.
It’s not the chalk that’s the problem.
It’s using it to disguise the fact that the milk you’re selling is spoiled.
Yeah. I get that…but the way it was phrased by OOP it was as of “chalk” was used by an example as if that makes it somehow worse. We still put “chalk” in milk, though.
Better example is like those people who say “eww” to hotdogs because there’s a regulation limiting how many bug parts are allowed in them…not even considering the alternative of “no limit on how many bug parts”.
Or my wife, who refuses to eat a cherry tomato if it fell on the ground.
In big cities like New York, some dairies fed cows leftover grain mush from distilleries, called swill. The cows were sick, the milk was watery and bluish, and to make it look normal, some sellers added stuff like chalk, flour, even plaster. It wasn’t about hiding spoiled milk like you suggest - it was about making terrible milk from unhealthy cows seem drinkable.
Bro. Jesus fucking christ.
It wasn’t about hiding spoiled milk like you suggest - it was about making terrible milk from unhealthy cows seem drinkable.
That’s literally the same thing. Did you just learn what a thesaurus is?
Except it’s not the same thing. Spoiled refers to milk that has gone bad due to age or improper storage. That’s not what the swill milk scandal was about. It was milk that was bad to begin with - not spoiled, just poor quality because it came from sick animals.
Industrial chalk that was used as adulterants wasn’t nearly as pure as the calcium carbonate you are imagining
Plus I can’t imagine that a company who is adulterating their milk with chalk dust is going to stop to find and choose a food-safe chalk dust and supplier. They’d just scoop a bunch from whoever’s cheapest, and if they adulterate their chalk dust with bleach or something, that’ll be going straight into the milk.
we’ve become complacent for so long due to good regulations keeping us safe invisibly, that your average voter seems to think we never needed them to begin with.
The ignorance is staggering and dangerous
Yeah the good times making weak people has gone full swing and people don’t realize how bad it could be.
Weak people who have never been tested with an actual bad time in their life. Just upset if they had even a little restriction.
just to point out the other side of this…
(and I already know I’ma be downvoted for just saying that)
Some regulations are bad. Many are good and we actually need them, but some are bad. For example, when there’s a few large companies in an industry, they often lobby for regulations designed to increase the cost of doing business. While the big fish can pay the costs of these extra regulations, smaller companies cant, and just cant compete with the big fish, lowering the amount of competition in the industry and promoting more monopolistic behavior. We saw Openai try to do exactly this back when they went to Congress to warn the senators about the dangers of ‘agi’ and how it quickly needed to be regulated. Well they failed, and now there’s tons of companies with their own products that rival Chatgpt in every way other than the brand recognition.
you don’t solve this by having less regulations lmao
its solved by getting money out of politics, along with removing regulations that don’t make sense and keeping the ones that do
sure but regulatory capture and a controlled market are not really a counter argument to regulation so much as an argument for more regulation
strict rules enforcing disclosure and other sunshine laws are key to exposing corruption like you are suggesting
Wait, so you’re telling me that this politician who will definitely get a CEO position in that company does not want to make life better for me?
Folks here think regulation, and immediately put it to food and Ai or other white collar applications.
Working in plastic manufacturing for ten years, and chemical manufacturing for a few more, the term deregulatuon terrifies me. Regulations keep employees safe, and aims to keep the products we make safe.
I think of environmental impacts first and foremost, which is the kind of deregulation I assumed was meant with this regimes obsession with bringing back coal, oil, and mining/deforestation if our national parks.
Getting money out of politics is implemented with regulation. We only have one environment, and they want to deregulate environmental safety/preservation.
…removing regulations that don’t make sense and keeping the ones that do
Having safety regulations for plastic manufacturing and protecting the environment makes sense, so those should exist.
The tweet itself limits its scope to food safety regulations specifically. The title of this lemmy post was condensed for brevity, which might create the impression that it’s trying to make a larger point about regulations in toto. But I figured I could get away with it because I figured that surely people would read the tweet before commenting.
People? Read? Never.
Reminds me of car startups (in the US) taking off one wheel, turning them into moto/autocycles, so they wouldn’t have to go through expensive car certification processes
There’s also regulations that actually hurt the things they are intended to protect. It’s generally called perverse incentives. The example here is related to endangered species. It’s in the interest of those that find an endangered species on their property to “shovel and shut up” as the presence only creates problems for the owner.
I will link to the 1858 Bradford sweets poisoning.
deleted by creator
You’re free to add your own chalk.
One of the weirdest aspects of America is that we think people whose job is making money for shareholders should have more power than the public servants we hire to work for us.
I think thats just a subset of the whole “Government should be run like a business” mindset.
There’s a hardline belief that any business is automatically more efficient than government because if it weren’t it would die from competition, period, end of story. The real equation is that companies are as inefficient as they can afford to be, and the bigger ones can afford plenty. In one of my jobs my manager gave me maybe 2 or 3 weeks of actual work to do in 6 months. In another my team was told to hold off starting a project because there was a change of plan and they didn’t know exactly what they wanted. So we just screwed around for a couple months. I won’t say what company but in both cases it rhymed with Bicrosoft.
Republicans: But we are the ones selling the spoiled milk.
Hands up if you didn’t already know that. Or intuited it. To me this seems to be something only US-Americans who argue purely ideologically for a “small government” need reminding of. They’re paradoxically often the first in line calling for government intervention when their drinking water is full of poop or something.
Old saying “Fire and flight regulations are written in blood.” Food regulations are likely written in various excretions?
There have absolutely been deaths due to unsafe, mass produced foods.
Insane! 178 others were left with permanent injury including kidney and brain damage!
And this was entirely preventable
However, the Jack in the Box fast-food restaurant chain had knowledge of but disregarded Washington state laws which required burgers to be cooked to 155 °F (68 °C), the temperature necessary to completely kill E. coli. Instead, it adhered to the federal standard of 140 °F (60 °C). If Jack in the Box followed the state cooking standard, the outbreak would have been prevented, according to court documents and experts from the Washington State Health Department.
California and Washington States ahead of the game again, especially in 2025+
New safety laws/rules are always in reaction to bad behavior or to shift liability
I worked in industrial food plants in the central valley of California
Jack n the Box killing children, changed the food industry
All the big retailers & fast food chains started requiring SAP, ISO type material resource planning systems to limit their liability. We had regular drills where we had to find a specific package wherever it might be within the hour as if there was a problem that had come to light
While OSHA & CalOSHA exist, our biggest driver of safety improvements was the workmans comp insurance companies. They would do inspections a couple of times a year & we would implement their “suggestions”
In 20+ years the only time I heard about an OSHA inspection was after an outside contractor got crushed by a loading dock he was working on & failed to block it up, they were in & out in an hour
Excretions with blood?
They’re the best excretions…
Puss is an option too
We didn’t regulate the housing market after 2008 cause the people with money were already getting in the driver seat and wouldn’t have it.
Speaking of Americans, at least half of us are criminally uneducated and watch literally nothing but Fox News. You can’t teach them even with indisputable proof. If the talking heads say it’s bad, then it’s bad.
Framing one half of the population as beyond saving or inherently evil is not just lazy - it’s historically dangerous. It reduces millions of individuals into a caricature and gives people permission to treat them with contempt, as if that’s somehow virtuous. That kind of thinking has been used to justify some of the worst things we’ve done to each other as humans.
When you actually talk to people outside your bubble, you quickly realize that most of us want the same basic things - stability, safety, meaning, a fair shot in life. We just have different beliefs about how to get there. Writing off entire groups as irredeemable only erodes any future possibility of understanding or change.
I agree with you. No one is beyond saving, education, or help. Some people seem irredeemable, and they may decide to act that way, but the option is always there. This idea is the core, it’s fundamental to my moral code my beliefs, my ethics. Everyone can learn and grow, and it takes serious damage to remove that capability.
However, we’re dealing with people who are denying our right to exist and don’t engage in good faith. Until they can take those basic steps affirming the social contract, I see no reason debate with such people needs to take place with words.
However, we’re dealing with people who are denying our right to exist and don’t engage in good faith. Until they can take those basic steps affirming the social contract, I see no reason debate with such people needs to take place with words.
What you’re talking about here is certain individuals - and I take no issue with that. There absolutely are people who are too far gone and probably can’t be pulled back. But those aren’t the people I’ve been referring to.
My issue is with lumping tens of millions of people into the same group based solely on their political leaning and then speaking about them as if they all share the same beliefs. That’s virtually never true, no matter what group we’re talking about. The differences within a group are often greater than the differences between groups. In other words, there’s more variation between individual Republicans than there is between the average Republican and the average Democrat. My point is: they’re not all the same, and they shouldn’t be treated as such.
For fucks sake, this whole “let’s all hold hands and sing Kumbaya” response is pure garbage. They’re trying to pull that “oh, it’s just different opinions” crap, but that’s a load of bullshit. We’re not talking about whether pineapple belongs on pizza here. We’re talking about a movement built on lies, hate, and actively trying to undo hundreds of years of suffrage and civil rights movements that allow you to have free speach.
This ain’t about “different beliefs on how to get there.” Half these people are living in a fantasy world where facts don’t matter and anyone who doesn’t look or think like them is the enemy. You can’t “understand” someone who thinks immigrants are poisoning the blood of America or that the last election was stolen with zero proof. That’s not a “belief”; that’s a dangerous delusion.
And this whole “tolerance” nonsense? Please. You don’t tolerate people who want to strip away your rights or incite violence against your neighbors. That’s not virtuous; that’s being a damn doormat. Some ideas are just plain wrong, and some people are so far gone on the Fox News Kool-Aid that they’re beyond reason. Pretending otherwise is just enabling the madness.
The Paradox of Tolerance is akin to an invading force telling the insurgence that no one else has to die as long as they comply.
For fuck’s sake, this whole “we need to live peacefully with our neighbors” rhetoric is pure garbage. They’re trying to pull that “oh, we just need to coexist” crap, but that’s a load of bullshit. We’re not talking about disagreements over taxes here. We’re talking about a group built on lies and corruption, poisoning the roots of our nation and threatening everything we’ve worked for.
This isn’t about “different ideas on how to build a society.” These people live in a fantasy world, manipulating the media, the economy, and the schools. They don’t care about our culture, our history, or our future. You can’t “understand” someone who undermines the moral fabric of the country and destroys our unity from the inside. That’s not a belief - it’s a threat.
And this whole “tolerance” nonsense? Please. You don’t tolerate a parasite. That’s not virtuous - that’s weak. Some ideas are poison. Some people are too far gone. Pretending otherwise just enables the collapse.
Sound familiar?
Because it should.
You literally contradicted the entirety of your last response. But good job. 👍
I simply took your message and swapped out Republicans to Jews just to highlight the eerie similarities in tone and logic. I hoped this would be obvious and wouldn’t need explaining. I guess I was wrong.
you telling me conservatives and corporate sociopaths are an ethnicity? you telling me the world wouldn’t be a better place without them? are you seriously so fucking stupid that you think we can compromise with christian nationalists?
purge now, purge yesterday, purge forever. or humanity dies.
The thing is, when you speak to red hats on an individual level, the person you commented said they want the same basic safety and quality of life we do. I agree, this is true.
Where it strays is folks in power have preyed on the ignorance of the most blue collar, “School is for yuppies” “never lived anywhere but the boonies/sticks” kind of people.
The propaganda worked on them. They were targeted by this regime for decades, and it’s finally manifested.
Of course I speak on a macro level, because on a micro level I’ve cut out every racist/bigot in my life. Propaganda is a hell of a drug, and not everyone finds value in education which helps you spot it. Its a mess for sure
That’s the point if “The Paradox of Tolerance”. I talk to these people on a daily basis. On the surface level, they are decent human beings. Until such a topic is touched on.but when they truly feel comfortable, is when they start spewing hate. That’s when I stop sympathizing.
Every person deserves a right to speak, but when that speech encroaches on another’s right to existence, is where I draw the line.
A truly free society maximizes relative freedom for as many as possible, not absolute freedom for some at the cost of freedom of others.
And yes, this is exactly the line drawn by the paradox of tolerance.
The difference between left and right wing, non - economically, is still about distribution of power. But not only monetary power, but also the power granted by the positive and negative freedoms we have in a social system. Only that in our societies, freedom and wealth are heavily entangled, and increasingly so.
This is true, but it’s important to remember that some regulations were not written in blood, but instead in racism - see R1-zoning as one of the most significant examples.
Regulations are just tools, really. They can evidently be used for good, and should be used for good, but some are being used for bad and should be reformed.
Sure, and such regulations should be reformed. We should not just start turning stuff off and seeing who breaks!
I wish that would go without saying, but current events are unfortunately evidence of that not being true.
But if we change from the way we do things now, the opportunity to learn the same lessons all over again, every few decades, might be lost.
