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We need more competition, not consolidation, in food-inspection agencies

My experience and my reading has convinced me that more freedom (less government) in a given industry or sector of the economy leads to more, cheaper, and better goods and services. Libertarians take this as a given. Despite the Statist objection to the possibility of competition between rival companies/agencies/organizations in sectors currently monopolized by the State—justice, roads, crime prevention, education, for instance—the fact that these are such basic and vital parts of society is a great reason we need more competition and more options for them, and the fact that we have only one final, ultimate authority in those matters is the genesis of all their problems, not a necessary condition for their functioning well.

Another function of government that Statists get all hysterical when you suggest it can and should be performed by private companies is safety regulations. In this instance, food inspection. The Associated Press reports:

A cheese pizza that arrived at the restaurant frozen? The Food and Drug Administration is in charge of inspecting it.

A frozen pepperoni pizza? That’s the Agriculture Department.

A fresh pizza, made at the restaurant? Both departments would be responsible for the original ingredients, if the pizza has meat on it. What if he eats eggs? It depends whether the eggs are inside the shell, in liquid form or have been processed. Fish? Some fish is inspected by the Commerce Department.

The FDA bears the brunt of food safety oversight, a mission called into question in the wake of a massive recall of peanut products. But at least 15 government agencies have a hand in making sure food is safe under at least 30 different laws, some of which date back to the early 1900s.

It’s a convoluted system.

“There is no one person, no individual today who is responsible for food safety,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. “We have an immediate crisis which requires a real restructuring.”

Yeah: in our society the only groups of people who are considered qualified or justified in certifying the safety of food are government bureaucrats. Too much government is the problem, not too little or the wrong kinds.

DeLauro and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., have been proposing an overhaul of the nation’s food safety structure for more than a decade. There might now be the political will to do something following the outbreak of salmonella traced to peanuts blamed for sickening 600 people and killing at least nine others.

They may be making headway. President Barack Obama’s new agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, said he supports creating a single, combined food safety agency. It’s a major break from his predecessors.

“You can’t have two systems and be able to reassure people you’ve got the job covered,” Vilsack said.

That makes exactly as much sense as saying you can’t have two computer operating systems out there, two antivirus software companies, two construction companies making houses, two different doctors who might recommend different treatments for a patient, two different weight-loss diets, or two different houses of the legislature. What a bunch of morally bankrupt, brain-dead morons.

Not only is it possible to imagine the private choices and voluntary transactions of free individuals substituting for the fiats of a monopolistic State, such freedom can only turn out better than monopolistic State fiat. It is juvenile at best and evil at worst to suggest that the free market would not innovate solutions to problems deemed important by the populace in the absence of government. As Frederic Bastiat said,

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.

We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

Posted in Philosophy, Socialism, Statolatry