One Business To Rule Them All

John Stossel fancies himself a champion of "the common man", a super-charge consumer advocate. And while he may have started out as such, he's molded that image into a Fox"News" version of a concern troll.

His new mission, to convince people that the FDA and DEA don't need to exist.



A former burglar/fire-alarm salesman turned conservative blogger seems to think this is a "capital" idea - pun fully intended.

...businesses and residences can get insurance-premium breaks when they install alarm systems and have them monitored by UL-certified providers. UL requires providers to meet a lengthy series of requirements on manufacturing, installation, and service, and the providers pay thousands of dollars every year to retain their certification. Factory Mutual provides a parallel certification, mainly in fire systems, which competes with UL. Each monitoring facility gets an annual inspection to ensure compliance, and UL follows up on complaints from consumers to determine whether certification should be suspended. It’s a powerful compliance incentive, and it comes completely separate from any government intervention.

Could that same process be used for pharmaceuticals? It’s difficult to see why it couldn’t...

Because as we all know, drug regulation and ensuring food safety standards is just like having your ADT system on your split-level maintained by the company.

Give me a fucking break.

Both Stossel and Morrissey are expressing this "blind trust" in what Underwriters Laboratories could bring to the table. Would they have their own law-enforcement division to take the place of all DEA officers should that agency be dismantled? Likely they would be offered employment by UL, but that's a whole other story entirely.

The conservative mantra that all government agencies could be replaced by "private sector" entities shows a vast amount of ignorance on their part. The reality is that by removing a government regulatory body, you would replace it with a private corporation that would then have monopolistic control over food and drug providers. And these people are out to not just insure the safety and reliability of a product, but out to make a profit. And I think that we have all seen what happens when you have a company with control over a vast area doesn't have any competition. Just take a look at the healthcare industry.

Morrissey goes on to make the point that other regulatory bodies would magically appear out of think air to create competition. But here's the problem with that - who wants there to be a competition to see how safe that meat you bought at Wal Mart is? The competitive aspect of this would only lead to providers seeking out not just the cheapest route but the route with the fewest regulations. I don't know about you, but I'd feel a little safer using products that weren't tested against the lowest common denominator.

In the end, this sort of conservative fantasy talk serves no purpose but for people like Stossel and Morrissey to hang their hat on a theory that plays well in their heads but lacks the solid foundation of reality.