This weekend I caught glimpse of a jarring Seattle Times headline – “Pot products recalled for pesticides in Colorado, but not in Washington”.
Here, in 2016, was a perfect example of what industries will do when the free market “has its way.” The use of harmful pesticides on marijuana is hardly an anomaly. Over the course of history, we have seen that when businesses are given the freedom to either poison their consumers or not, the results have been disturbingly lopsided.
Why is this so?
The answers lie in the faulty assumptions of free market philosophy; the very theory which allows for industries to be free from government regulation.
>>>snip<<<
By prioritizing freedom above all other moral and political considerations, free market ideologists like Speaker Ryan put an uneven burden of responsibility on the consumer. Should it be up to me, the consumer, to dig into the marijuana industry and see if the pot I’m about to smoke is laced with harmful pesticides? Is the burden on me to see if the beef I’m eating at McDonalds is actually from a cow? Is that what “freedom” is all about?
Milton Friedman quipped that “underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.” Such an unnuanced statement is as insulting as it is odious. One can believe in the power of the free market (and freedom) while also advocating for government regulation and the right for consumers to have adequate information to make a “rational decision.” To say otherwise is to believe in an ideology detached from human behavior.
The results are clear: when given unchecked autonomy, industries will not consider the long-term health of their consumers. That is an unfortunate byproduct of blindly allowing industries to have unchecked freedom. To quote Friedman again, “one of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” A terrific insight into a profound blind spot of humanity – too bad proponents of the free market don’t examine theirs.
[The whole short article is well worth reading and can be found here]
Are free, unregulated markets better than regulated markets? Why or why not?