Here's the link to the newspaper profit story I mentioned in the previous post. Here is Reason.com's take.
As you might imagine, its NOT all good news, and I won't completely pretend to understand how a 100.1% drop in profits over five years can result in a 12% profit margin. Well, OK, I kinda can: If profits drop, but expenses drop more, the margin can stay the same on reduced income... right?
(Semi) PERMANENT DISCLAIMER: Tobacco and cigarettes are now regulated by the FDA (Food & Drug Admin). The legislation allowing this expressly prohibits the companies from advertising, in any way, that they are infact regulated by the FDA. Why? The government (and presumably the FDA) fears it might give the tobacco companies some credibility.
First off, given the number of drugs the FDA regulates that end up killing or injuring loads of people, I'm not sure the FDA has any credibility to begin with. But if your worried that advertising FDA regulation would lend the product credibility as being "safe" (and assuming that is bad because the product in fact isn't safe), doesn't that call into the question the credibility of the FDA anyway?
Put another way:
1) If the FDA is designed to make sure F&Ds are safe, and
2) if hypothetically it does its job well enough to create that reputation so that advertising FDA regulation would create the inference of a safe product,
3) doesn't allowing/regulating a knowingly hazardous product call into question #1??
Anyway, I have a problem with the whole "we will regulate you, but you can't tell any we are" thing. So I'll be posting (an abbreviated) version of the disclaimer with every post (when/if I remember), just to make a point.
And this is why I try to ignore the world. Oye, I don't know how you do it without going mad.
ReplyDeleteA) First they came for the Nazis, and I didn't speak up. Then they came for the KKK, and I didn't speak up. Then they came for the homosexuals, and still, I didn't speak up. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up.
ReplyDeleteB) *In funny/honest voice* Who is to say that I haven't?
C)It is tough. And its overwhelming sometimes to see a world so wholely different than I would imagine. But I do what I can. It might be little, but I like to think my support for the Libertarians and disclaimers such as the one above make a difference. Even if its only a handful of people who notice. If that handful tell a handful some day, and so on and so on, it distributes. That sly distribution implants the idea, implants the concept. Baby steps. Baby steps.
Oh, and seasteading.