From: Randall Parker 

Gene,

You miss one basic point: raise costs to private enterprise and you will raise costs
to the consumer.

Gene McAloon wrote:

> Yours is the standard Republican-business rant:  Avoiding the loss of a
> comparatively few lives is not worth the lowering of profits to private
> enterprise.

The cost would be born by everyone. If everyone pays, say, 10 cents more per pound of
beef as a result of mandatory testing of every cow then the cost will run into the
hundreds of millions of dollars or more per life saved. That assumes that there is
even any sort of risk to begin with and America's foremost prion expert and Nobel
laureate says that is unproven.

> It is interesting that the only cost you mention is that to industry. You
> confine yourself to that because the alternative, public cost through
government
> regulation, is unacceptable because government regulation is unacceptable.
Yet
> the cost to government is minimal either as a percentage of spending or on a
per
> capita basis.  Yet you don't even mention it.

No, the testing could be done by the USDA or by industry. What entities pay for it
does not affect whether the public at large ends up paying.


> Another interesting aspect of your rant is that you have no objections to
> government spending millions on research at long as long as that is paid by
> taxpayers, but costs to the taxpayer through government regulation is
> unacceptable because regulation of private enterprise is unthinkable to
business
> interests.

Research provides a real permanent benefit in the form of new scientific knowledge
that is useful for preventing and curing disease. Research will lead to vaccines and
drugs.

> There is indeed rant here, although it isn't necessarily yours; it is that of
> Republican-business origins and it is much older than you are. You are simply
> mindlessly repeating it.

You are the mindless one Gene. You are just repeating decades old ideological lessons
learned in your youth.

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