How can you know if your yellow sweets are coloured with lead chromate? How could you know all the millions of things you need to know about possible dangers so you can evaluate if some product that's 10% cheaper is actually not going to kill you?
It's only regulation and government interference that can make it manageable for the consumer.
Well because if they are then eventually someone will get sick, they will sue the company, the company will have to pay millions in damages, and it will have to stop using lead in their sweets, which will scare every other company away from trying to do the similar thing /s
Poe's law strikes again! There are in fact people that think like that, and have to be lead by the nose to waters of wisdom with the hopes of drinking a small bit.
The impetus towards revenge killings and blood debts successfully deterred malicious actions through most of human prehistory and even much of history. With the trend towards corporate consolidation, each CEO's exposure is actually pretty huge when "their actions result in the death of others". All that's necessary is a well-armed grieving family member and a social narrative that actually, yes, this is how we do things. All we're missing is the narrative.
And the geeks actually have the narrative. Cyberpunk is just the most aspirational dream of occasional justice that can exist within the confines of the America Reagan built, in the post-liberal corporatist society.
>> The personal, as everyone is so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference - the only difference in their eyes - between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal. - Takeshi Kovacs, Altered Carbon
Fortunately, we saw a solution to the problem of dead customers just a day or two ago right here on HN! https://repaer.earth/
> It's only regulation and government interference that can make it manageable for the consumer.
I would disagree with such a strong statement, but for various reasons I would agree that a purely private approach probably wouldn't be able to achieve the current degree of consumer safety in the U.S., though in less militantly individualistic societies perhaps it could. (Note that "the government", as in the police state, and institutions of social governance are not the same thing.)
I would rather know what potentially harmful substances are in something and decide if it’s acceptable than not be told at all.
Indeed the level is so low that under the law, the daily recommended dose of vitamin A for pregnant women would need a notice saying it caused birth defects. They had to ignore the law and add a caveat for vitamin A since not taking it causes birth defects.
If they didn’t pick an arbitrary threshold, ignoring scientific consensus on what dose makes the poison, it would have been far more successful.
23 pages of small print single lined basic lines.
It includes everything from Aspirin, Aloe Vera leaf extract, Oral contraceptives and estrogens, Alcoholic beverages, Leather dust, Chinese style salted fish, to Benzene, Bracken Fern, and hexavalent chromium.
Bracken fern being particularly widespread, but surprisingly contains a highly potent cancer causing chemical that can also get passed to humans in cows milk. [https://aacrjournals.org/cancerpreventionresearch/article/3/...].
There is likely nowhere in the state that shouldn’t technically have a Prop 65 warning on it.
Thanks guys, real useful
* https://www.simongarfield.com/books/mauve/
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/580291.Mauve
* https://archive.org/details/mauvehowonemanin0000garf
It's a few years old now (2000), so I don't know if there's a newer/better 'full-length' laymen treatment on the topic: