I dont know if that is the shining example of government protection, nor the indictment of free markets you think it is.
>>your Ayn Randian fantasy
Nope, not an Objectivist. I am small l libertarian, very different from Objectivism which is Randian philosophy. Rand hated libertarians.
I am also not opposed to all government, or government regulation. I am opposed to extreme amounts of regulations (like regulation what type of interface a car must have be it touch screen or buttons), and I prefer the government to get out of my life. and I believe we have become a massively over regulated and criminalized society that in large part has created many of the problems we have today such as these huge corporations.
Some basic minimalist safety regulations are ok. Regulation numbers in the billions of pages where no one human can ever know and understand them all... Hard pass on that.
Notice I mentioned the FDA -- which has as a mandate to ensure safe food and drink, not the local official who had no such mandate and powered monied interested held more sway than poor dead infants. You use a local official as evidence of a regulatory body in a time when local officials were actors for industry -- and expect me to think you spent more than 3 seconds thinking critically about that?
> I am small l libertarian
And, like most libertarians, (who are not just closet fascists calling themselves libertarians because libertarians don't bother to exclude them), your definition of 'extreme' could be anything from 'driver's licenses' to 'not being able to sell your own children', so who knows what line you stand on. Whatever it is, I would like you to remove yourself from all of the government protections you disagree with and see how long you and your libertarian friends last. Hint -- it has been tried numerous times, and always ends in hilarity and completely predictable outcomes.
Just two off the top of my head...
* https://boingboing.net/2020/10/19/libertarians-exit-pursued-...
Facism which is a totalitarian collectivist ideology has nothing in common with libertarianism, your assertion there are closet fascist calling themselves libertarians is plainly false most likely because you misapply the term fascist due your are probably complete ignorance of both. Which is common today where alot of people that seem to have world view closely aligned with classic fascist leaders proclaim themselves to be "anti-fascist" unironically.
>so who knows what line you stand on.
well if you had read my entire comment instead of cherry picking the quote you wanted you find where my line is.
> well if you had read my entire comment instead of cherry picking the quote you wanted you find where my line is.
I read your comment -- you used the term 'extreme' and then said the government over-regulates, and you want 'minimal safety' regulations. However, your arguments do not line up with this, since I have read your comments and they are quite a bit more on the 'let corporations do what they wish' than 'the government is too damn nanny-state'.
So, forgive me if I don't take you at your word. My experiences with libertarians has led me to just assume that your 'line' is whatever you feel like, that benefits you, until it doesn't anymore, then you are on the other side of it.
Yikes. Hard pass on being a poison-tester for every entrepreneur that dreams up a cost-cutting measure to increase their profits selling me food. Looks like it took years for the image of milk to recover.
People like you went on about how regulation would kill the industry and hurt the market, but what was really killed was more than 8,000 infants (ibn one year alone)[0].
Industry does not care about your life or your family or babies because they have no feelings. They exist to compete and win, at any cost.
Without something (democratic government is a good option for this) looking out for consumers, and for the other market players, your Ayn Randian fantasy will come about, and it will not be the utopia of consumer choice and meritocracy, it will be the later 1800s all over again, with most people poor to the point they are feeding their children milk with plaster in it, and a few robber barons controlling entire industries and killing competition before it can compete.
Do not look at 'free markets' with some rose colored glasses, because without ensuring industry deals with externalities and without ensuring that competition can happen by preventing on company from owning entire supply chains or cartels setting prices and preventing innovation, then the market would not be fair a t all, and most people's lives would be exponentially more miserable.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal