Thursday, October 10, 2013

How perfect are markets anyway?

 The government shutdown is endangering what America eats, food safety experts said this week, as all inspections of domestic food except meat and poultry have halted and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recalled furloughed workers to handle a salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds of people in 18 states. (see link)


 In a perfect world, such a breakout would never happen.  You would know that the raw chicken from a California plant was diseased.  But in our world, such knowledge is impossible to gain.  I find it fascinating how much of a hold theory has on our minds.  What do you think?


4 comments:

  1. I think this still goes back to the idea that there is no perfect market system and we cannot adequately base our policy decisions off of theory. I find it interesting that politicians seem to base their talking points off of theory that they cannot explain or even understand.

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  2. On the other hand one can argue that the market has been made imperfect by gov't involvement. People have been accustomed to these checks being done by gov't agencies thereby preventing the market from creating such services. If the market provides this check-up service it wouldn't be shutdown right now and would be working (maybe not at non-profitable levels but it would be running comparatively better to what is happening now).

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  3. I like what Gift said a lot here. Government always has to be involved in everything..

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  4. Doesn't it suck that we live in a world of market failures AND government failures?

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