Further analysis of the FDA

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The profit maximization objective is not the right tool to decide what ride is safe for my child,


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Why don't you decide what is safe for your child?


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I usually do. But when I want some technologically adnaced product, such as a drug, I must rely on the opinion of experts, people such as chemists, biologists, doctors, etc. I'm neither.


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OK, so seek their opinions. Nobody is suggesting that you be restricted from doing so.


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Even if was, I could not realistically conduct a one-man research amongst experts for every drug I want to give to my child, so I am relying on the opinion of those experts, more or less on blind faith. ("More or less" because a modicum of research usually goes on, as with most people in such situations. We try our best to do the best for ourselves and our kin.)


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So instead of experts, you'd rather place your blind faith in bureaucrats.


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And I'd rather rely first on the opinion of people (such as the people who allow the drug in the market, in the first place) who do NOT stand to gain if drug XYZ is a best seller, than otherwise. A simple matter of getting the priorities right - and working for me.


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Again, what's stopping you?


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...who is qualified to fly an airplane...


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Don't fly on a plane with poorly qualified pilots. I have a feeling that imcompetant piloting would get some costly bad reviews rather quickly.


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The process of weeding out the qualified from the unqualified -and identifying the so 'n so qualified- would involve a serious cost in human health and lives. Especially if we'd want to get statistically significant about it.


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So if government doesn't license pilots, airlines will just let anyone who wants to fly their planes in order to figure out who can do it and who can't? That doesn't even pass the giggle test.

How does government magically figure out who is qualified and who isn't?


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LOL. Again with the "privatize-all-roads" obsession! You must be assuming that every private owner of those private roads will have the same rules and regulations and signs across the country.


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Who assumes that?

Every building I go into has different, unstandardized signs for the restrooms. Somehow, though, I manage to find the men's room without confusion.


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Anyone who suggests the mere notion of organising something as a society is accused of totalitarian leanings by "anarcho"-capitalists. How boring this becomes, after a while.


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No. Feel free to organize all you want. Accusations of totalitarianism only surface when you start pointing guns at people to organize them the way *you* want, instead of the way they want.


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I'd assume (I'd concede, if you want) that the primary objective of any organisation, and espcially of a bureaucratic, hierarchical organisatiion, is to perpetuate itself, i.e. the equivalent of the reproduction instinct in living beings. So, yes, the FDA, like most aforesaid organisations, first and foremost would want the necessity of its existence continuously affirmed and strengthened. Which would affect its overall work, in some way, one supposes.

Still, and that's the significant difference, such a motive pales in comparison to the importance of the motive behind the private organisation putting out its products (drugs): that organisation's sole objetive is profit maximization. Apparently, people have wisely decided to check that motive, as best as they could, through the creation of social woking agencies such as the FDA.


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So if the government doesn't test drugs, you'll have no choice but to blindly believe whatever the producer of the drug tells you? Even though that's what you're doing now, since the FDA bases their decisions on data supplied by the manufacturer.