• How is consumer protection handled in a libertarian society? – Quora

    9 years ago
    ^CONSUMPTION 2.0, ^PublicSafety (Prevention)          
    I’ve been curious as to if there are any regulations allowed in a libertarian society to protect consumers?  I’m thinking specifically of items in the market place that even educated consumers would have trouble investigating for themselves.  Take, for example, medication.  Would there be any regulations to keep a pharmaceutical company from selling, say, cholesterol medicine that in fact does no better than a placebo, and maybe even have harmful side-effects? 
    Another example would be food suppliers.  Would there any way consumers would know if the meat they were buying had more things like rat hair, droppings, etc than another brand?  There are regulations in place of how much of that stuff can be allowed in food manufacturing.  Would those protections still exist?  If not, how would the consumer find out?

    Disclosure: I’m generally against libertarian policies, but I wonder if I’m ill-educated on the subject and want to start researching.

    Thanks!

     

    Answer by  John Fogh

    Libertarians generally feel that legal protection against fraud, negligence, or willful harm is sufficient. The bar for ‘successful’ consumer protection is very low.

    1. The power to regulate is corrupting. If a government agency has the power to regulate companies it is in a company’s best interest to cozy up to it’s regulators.

    2. Regulation is stifling. Because of the regulatory regime of the FDA it is very, very, hard to have a startup pharmaceutical company. Only the large players can comply with the regulatory demands of the FDA (and lobby for regulations that benefit them.)

    3. Regulation is ineffective. When the FDA manages to ‘protect’ people from the 1:100,000 side effect of some drug, it also delays (or prevents) life saving treatments. A company that violates the FDA guidelines is forced to pay a fine to the government, but any damages to the actual patients harmed will require a civil judgement. Why bother quibbling about actual scientific outcomes? The FDA regulates homeopathy. 

    4. Regulation is very expensive. Armies of lawyers (and lobbyists) are necessary to get a new drug to the marketplace adding to the cost of the drug. Vast regulatory testing and enforcement mechanism has to be funded by the taxpayer.

    How is consumer protection handled in a libertarian society? – Quora.