Consumers are as self-interested and profit-driven as businesses. Just that profits for them come from unquantifiable, intangible returns in the form of satisfaction derived from the products they buy.
This is something mainstream economics and discussion about markets miss. (Only Austrian economics acknowledges this). Markets are not driven by profits. They are driven by producers satisfying demands from consumers.
Speaking of Austrian economics, here's an Austrian view of the subject we are discussing, in case you missed my other reply in which I shared this link:
Also, my business model need not and will not be the only one that will be tried out. Competing businesses will implement their models and the customers will have the option to choose between them.
Eg: If consultants and evaluators turn into advertisers, there is opportunity and profit for others to take their place to deliver genuine services, because there will always be customers for buying genuine services.
The improvement over the current status quo is this: patients, unhealthy and sick people have a way out of the corruption in the form of competition. And there are real incentives for people to offer a way out.
(Note that I'm not suggesting perfection at all, because perfection can never exist in human societies.)
And yes, if people are healthy, then they won't need many doctors, dieticians or consultants.
But you could say that for any problem that people have in life.
Every person will want his problems to be permanently solved rather than partially solved.
And those who permanently solve them will exist, unless a government-enforced cartel or monopoly prevents them from existing.
I have looked into and explored alternative medicinal and nutritionmus practices. They do exist. And one has to work hard to find them.
But they stay away from public view because of goons and criminals from the state potentially coming after them with their nonsensical regulations.
In a free market, these people would be far more prominent.
My ultimate point is this:
Trusting the government to regulate food and medicine will not work. It will always be an organisation of crookery and thievery. It's in its nature.
'FDA and Consumer Welfare' by Robert Higgs
I'm not fully sure what either of those mean, but is that a description of the type of people I'm describing?
Can you elaborate a little bit?
The origins of the terms left and right come from where people sat in the assembly after the French revolution.
Used to be defined as those in politics - the politicians, policymakers and intellectuals - who believed in classical liberal, laissez-faire ideas, i.e. natural rights, self-ownership, freedom of and to trade, property rights, etc.
Over time, egalitarian and socialist ideas have influenced people on this side. So now, it has changed into those in politics who believe that:
-the state needs to make policy that enforces equality among people, beyond just equality in front of the natural law. Examples include redistribution of wealth, socializing the means of production, affirmative action, educational reform etc.
-a 'right to' or 'freedom to' something constitutes whatever the majority, or the state, thinks it ought to be - the concept of natural rights and freedoms that exist absent a government is frowned upon by them.
-socialism, if implemented within the constraints of a democratic republic, is a superior form of organising society morally, legally, politically and economically.
To explore more:
(1) A talk by Hoppe
(2) A talk by Roderick T. Long
(3) An article by Murray Rothbard
https://mises.org/mises-daily/left-and-right-prospects-liberty
The underdog-friendly narratives of the left are emotionally appealing, till they have to define words, assign meaning to things, deal with reality, identify causes and effects.
Their vague definitions of what constitutes capitalism, justice, oppression, exploitation and privilege fail them.
Without good definitions, they lack the ideological tools necessary to analyse events and actions consistently.
Reality is something they perpetually fight against, rather than improve. In fact, nothing might seem real to them at all. It's all a conspiracy, according to them. Since they can't assign meanings adequately, everything will start to have meaning for them.
And because of the lack of skill to identify causality, they will eventually get to a point where the truth will start to become whatever they feel to be. Feel strongly enough about something, and it will become the truth, according to them.
Whether this is a postmodern thing or something else, I don't know.
But it's a sad state of affairs for a person to be in.
‘The Rothbardian Theory of Taxes’ by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Fighting with one of those force-field shields from Dune, except it's made totally impenetrable, would be awesome
I'll give you pointers because I'm not from the same jurisdiction you live in and do not deal with the same laws as you do:
>>How do we break this cycle?
Look for subsidies that make the production of certain crops artificially cheap. You'll find answers as to why the demand for healthy food isn't being met and producion is diverted towards less healthy alternatives.
This gets reflected in the prices of the end product and the sales of it. Which then reflects on the balance sheet of the companies that produce these end products.
Also look at the make-up of the basket of goods in the CPI index and see if there's correlation with which crops are being subsidized. The political incentives are right there.
>>How do we develop a for-profit company that evaluates the food industry independently and informs the people of what is healthy and what isn't?
1. Build a platform online that evaluates food products. Or a customer base offline through word-of-mouth.
2. Gain the trust of people who listen by being consistent and honest.
3. Get into sponsorship agreements with companies that are producing healthy food.
4. Let audience book one-on-one consulting sessions in which diet patterns are recommended.
This business model already exists and there are those I know who are consulting with people and upgrading their diets.
The other option is to invest capital and start producing food that's healthy and of better quality than existing, less healthy alternatives. Looking for regulatory restrictions or barriers that hinder such production will have to be removed.
>>Who quality-checks the quality-checkers?
The service being provided is informational and educational.
When a quality-checker is found to be unreliable, his customers will stop paying for his service. He will lose his position in the market and be replaced by a competing quality-checker.
If it's a legal service that's expected where the food producer is sued in court, then there's the question of whether fraud is involved. If there is, and it isn't punished, then it's a failure of the legal system, not the market.
If the legal system has failed, then private arbitration tribunals that go after the producers for fraud will have to be permitted to exist. And there will have to be a private appeals court system for challenging the decisions from these tribunals.
And I repeat what I said earlier: even with all this, if a person still voluntarily buys something he knows to be unhealthy, then that is his responsibility and noone else's.
>>But who hires them and pays them?
Same as any other business. Investors who see the opportunity in the market, entrepreneurs who start the business and the customer who pays for the services.
>>Who quality-checks the quality-checkers?
The market. Much better than the current situation where the monopoly regulator does not get quality-checked. If they were indeed being quality-checked, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
>>We get into this 'web of trust' model where you somehow have to determine which of the competing "experts" are trustworthy.
The market will determine who is trustworthy and who isn't. The companies that lie will lose their reputation and go bankrupt.
>>How do we structure it?
Trying to structure it through a top-down approach is the reason for the current mess. The market is a discovery process that is bottom-up by nature, comprised of people having differing ends and means. It cannot be designed, predicted or planned.
Beyond this, nothing can be done. Nothing ought to be done as well.
People buy what they want to. They are ultimately responsible for what they buy and eat.
The desire to tell other people what to do is a path towards tyranny.
I don't see why these experts have to be a part of a monopoly regulator.
It's obvious that a monopoly is prone to capture.
I don't see why there can't be competing organizations that keep track of the quality of service provided by food, health and social media companies.
They don't have to be non-profit. They can be paid for their services. There are many potential business models here.
Market competition will keep them from being captured.
Every service provided by the government can be provided by the market more effectively.
It is about holding a politician who claims to be libertarian to a libertarian standard.
This means attaining libertarian goals through libertarian means.
A fiscal surplus achieved by increasing tax coercion is certainly not a libertarian policy program.
Increasing govt debt is not a libertarian policy program either, as it just pushes the instance of tax coercion into the future.
If the surplus was attained by reducing spending, reducing debt and also reducing tax coercion at the same time, then yes. It can be appreciated.
And the counter argument that 'net taxes' fell is also not what I consider to be the standard. There should be no increase in taxes whatsoever.
In terms of monetary reform, abolishing the central bank would be worthy of praise. Backing the Peso with Gold would be another one.
The fact that no government doing this is not a valid justification he can give either.
And it's not just an economic criticism. There's also the question of whether he brought in libertarian legal reforms.
Ergo,
Play fiat games, win fiat prices
Justice, if it functions as it should in accordance with the Natural Law, will eliminate that power entirely, not limit it.
True education clarifies this.
Yep it was Saifedean
https://saifedean.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-the-milei-ponzi
Also:
"It is true that he has made the names of Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard and other thinkers of the Austrian School known to a wider public. But his knowledge of their ideas and theories is superficial and flawed, and his praise is therefore double-edged. In any case, we can only advise the public not to regard Milei’s statements on economic philosophy as authoritative...
...it is not enough that he pursue liberal goals with his policies. Rather, the political means must be objectively suitable for actually achieving those goals. This should be self-evident, but it is often disregarded in politics, as Ludwig von Mises repeatedly pointed out. Milei’s policies are a case in point."
- Prof. Dr. Rolf W. Puster, Prof. Dr. Jörg Guido Hülsmann and Prof. Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe
If a man's education in the social sciences does not involve helping him understand the difference between 'Government' and 'Law', it is no education at all.
It is indoctrination.
Government doesn't destroy through incompetence and corruption. It destroys through theft and coercion. It is anti-thetical to civilization.
Private sector is not about maximizing profits, but satisfying the demands of the market. Profits follow from that, and even then not always.
When they use the monopoly powers of the government to maximize profit, write regulations to keep competition out or destroy them, set preferable prices, write favourable tax codes through accounting deception, get bailouts and artificially cheap credit is when they start lying, poisoning, fattening and addicting.
The US doesn't do everything based on profit. It's not a market economy based on the rule of natural law anymore. Maybe it was to a certain extent long, long ago.
They do everything based on power. It's regulatory capture through the monopoly power of the government, not profits through productivity and captial accumulation that come from market demand and savings.
It's always up to the consumers to determine what's best for them and the businesses to serve them.
There are those who get fat, sick, depressed and deep in debt and those who stay fit, healthy, happy and financially well-off.
Healthcare has been captured by the regulation. Food industry has been captured by regulation. Social media has been captured by regulation. Anyone who tries to provide services to those who demand better healthcare, food and communication will be destroyed by existing cronies through regulation. It is the involvement of government in these industries that is at fault.
It's not the business of the law to set lifestyle standards.
The law should bother itself only with the protection of natural rights. And the government shouldn't make law but enforce it.
But having a monopoly of violence, they can't and won't.
We don't need to restructure industries or civilization.
We need to destructure government so that civilization and industry can restructure itself.
Separation of money and state ought to happen before any of that, because fiat money is the root of most evil, of which the corruption of law is the most insidious one.