Quote (Goomshill @ 20 May 2022 19:44)

Quite to the contrary, the issue was government regulators not doing their job. We shouldn't need to choose between babies dying of poisoned formula and babies starving. If the factories had been actually been operating up to code and regulatory agencies assuring it, they wouldn't have needed to shut down, and there wouldn't be a recall, and wouldn't be a shortage. But the democrats in response to this failure have taken the foolish approach of just throwing more money at the problem, as if the issue wasn't bureaucratic incompetence and ineffectiveness. Something you can't rectify by siphoning more public funds into a bottomless pit. How would increasing the FDA's budget and hiring more public servants deal with the fact that the existing bureaucracy simply ignored a whistleblower report that the Abbott facility was both committing wanton safety violations and falsifying records and failing to test formula?
Not to mention, if anything, monopolization is one of the biggest issues here. It was market forces that resulted in only four manufacturers producing 90% of the formula. There is no free market, the natural result of economic deregulation. That concentration is the proximate cause of this crisis.

If kindergarteners were going hungry in Minneapolis, I wouldn't want democrats to "solve" it by sending millions more to Feeding Our Future. But I wouldn't want libertarians to say only kids who can afford a lunch should be able to eat, either.

Quote (fender @ May 20 2022 12:42pm)

stop deluding yourself, marjorie. history has shown what happens with markets when the government doesn't regulate them properly: child labour, blair mountain, (shared) monopolies, slavery, piss-bottles, exploitation, leaded water, irreversibly destroyed environment...

you also ignore the REAL problem that presents itself right now. all your moronic ideals of what an market should look like aside, even someone as ideologically brainwashed as you has to realise that there is no political majority to implement such a libertarian dystopia, right? so commending the idiots who, for pure obstructionist reasons, opposed a bill to deal with the formula shortage, is highly disingenuous.

btw, here's the most likely scenario for your free market solution: american manufacturers would have been pushed out a long time ago, you'd be exclusively importing cheap chinese formula, and hundreds of thousands of american babies would have been poisoned with melamine back in 2008.

Quote (Santara @ 20 May 2022 20:08)

Spare me the straw man attempts.

The only thing that needs to happen right now is the FDA waiving import restrictions over labeling concerns. Poof, and overnight we can import whatever we need.

Quote (fenderp @ May 20 2022 01:14pm)

spare me the dodges, marjorie. if the markets were set up according to your "ideals" you'd have child labour, slavery, three quarters of the population living in abject poverty, and poisonous baby formula from china, you disingenuous hack. libertarianism is a joke, aren't you way too old for it anyway?

Quote (Santara @ May 20 2022 02:24pm)

Refusing to address straw men isn't a dodge, because there's nothing to dodge. You are a joke, which is why your mom stapled an apology letter to your birth certificate.

Quote (Santara @ 20 May 2022 21:24)

Refusing to address straw men isn't a dodge, because there's nothing to dodge. You are a joke, which is why your mom stapled an apology letter to your birth certificate.

Quote (fender @ May 20 2022 02:51pm)

classy as your fellow marjorie. just shows me how emotionally attached you are to your simplistic understanding of "libertarianism", proving me right about low-iq americans and their team sport mentality when it comes to politics.

you know it's true with the contaminated chinese formula, and that in your dumb little "free market" world it would have poisoned hundreds of thousands of american babies - that's why you're so desperate to change the topic...

Quote (Ghot @ May 17 2022 12:42am)

Quote (Santara @ 20 May 2022 23:19)

You have no standing to criticize.