> If I put a gun to your head and gave you 1 year to find out what, exactly, goes into a bag of Doritos and what the nutritional content is, you couldn't do it.
> Sure, but keep in mind you understand, maybe, a fraction of a fraction of 1% of your car. If you wanted to understand it more deeply that is a lifetime commitment. And, that's for one singular good. Extrapolate that and suddenly you'll need to be immortal to be an "intelligent market participant"
That's only true for a crazy definition of "understanding" and "intelligent market participant". You don't need a Grand Unifying Theory of understanding every subatomic particle in your car or Doritos from first principles.
People abstract away almost all of the complexity until they have a concept that fits in their head and can still deliver what they're looking for. This is good and right and is how all cognition works.
To the average car buyer like me, a car is a box with a couch that goes from A to B. In my case, I wanted the box to also handle snow on the way. From that point of view, my understanding of the a-to-b-couch-box-with-AWD is not a fraction of 1%, but exactly 100%.
To a Dorito buyer, the requirement is that it tastes good without immediately killing them. Not one Dorito buyer cares what strain of corn plant was used.
For almost every consumer product, you can try multiple different products at low cost and with ~no physical danger. So a large mass of buyers and sellers experimenting interactively will quickly arrive at near-optimal solutions.
The exception is things that can kill you on the first try, such as unsafe cars, airplanes, or medicine. For these products the optimal solution is the least possible amount of regulation combined with as much free market as possible.
> To a Dorito buyer, the requirement is that it tastes good without immediately killing them.
To the FDA, the requirement is that it's safe for human consumption, has a serving that is normal for a healthy adult, and does not lie about its contents.
See, YOUR requirements and what the government is able to give you are different.
Yes, buyer's DO care about this stuff. Maybe you've never read a nutritional label in your entire life, I don't know. But I know I care. And everyone I know cares.
>you can try multiple different products at low cost and with ~no physical danger.
Multiple obvious problems here.
First, trying multiple products costs money and time. Again, people have jobs, families, what have you. Consumers don't have the will for this.
Second, the "no physical harm" part is BECAUSE of regulations.
Did we all just collectively forget why these regulations were instituted and why we are now a high-trust society?
Companies used to just lie, and people used to drop like flies. We stopped that.
In my opinion, people's understanding of a free market is not only not in line with reality, but it also hasn't been in over 100 years. Moreover, nobody actually wants a free market. They just think they do, until they consider it more and realize it would actually be pretty terrible.
Point being - NO, companies shouldn't be allowed to lie.
> Sure, but keep in mind you understand, maybe, a fraction of a fraction of 1% of your car. If you wanted to understand it more deeply that is a lifetime commitment. And, that's for one singular good. Extrapolate that and suddenly you'll need to be immortal to be an "intelligent market participant"
That's only true for a crazy definition of "understanding" and "intelligent market participant". You don't need a Grand Unifying Theory of understanding every subatomic particle in your car or Doritos from first principles.
People abstract away almost all of the complexity until they have a concept that fits in their head and can still deliver what they're looking for. This is good and right and is how all cognition works.
To the average car buyer like me, a car is a box with a couch that goes from A to B. In my case, I wanted the box to also handle snow on the way. From that point of view, my understanding of the a-to-b-couch-box-with-AWD is not a fraction of 1%, but exactly 100%.
To a Dorito buyer, the requirement is that it tastes good without immediately killing them. Not one Dorito buyer cares what strain of corn plant was used.
For almost every consumer product, you can try multiple different products at low cost and with ~no physical danger. So a large mass of buyers and sellers experimenting interactively will quickly arrive at near-optimal solutions.
The exception is things that can kill you on the first try, such as unsafe cars, airplanes, or medicine. For these products the optimal solution is the least possible amount of regulation combined with as much free market as possible.