These people are our future

[Lyric]

Even with regulation companies left and right are getting caught with using child labor, dumping waste wherever they want, fixing prices and all sorts of abusive practices against their employees, competition and customers. Regulation is needed to ensure that _all_ companies, not just those that happen to feel like it, make safe products and adhere to environmental and safety standards.

This is the whole disconnect here, the foundations of free market are that every component in it (individuals) are all rational and benevolent, which simply isn't true. Assuming they do just leaves the whole system open for the most ruthless players to work the system for an unfair advantage.

Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our own decisions? | Video on TED.com
Are irrational economic choices baked into the human psyche? - SmartPlanet
Irrational Economic Man by Michael Shermer, City Journal 11 January 2009

Companies are not allowed to pollute or enslave (child labor) in my world. A free market that allows people to make their own choices does not depend on them making logically correct choices. If I enjoy McDonald's and it is killing me slowly and shortening my life, I would argue that it's better to let me make that poor decision instead of allowing angels in government to force me to avoid french fries because it isn't logical to eat them and it is killing me.

Please see my other post regarding the FDA. We don't need government testing everything and selecting "safe" products to allow us to purchase, and private companies like USP labs and consumer reports do the same thing for less money. Free market systems don't assume people are rational and ot certainly doesn't assume we are all benevolent. Hurting each other is prohibited, and leaders are given as little power as possible to allow each person to try to make themselves happy instead of being told what to do.

Do you think people are happier when government makes decisions for them? Do you really think we can find angels to make laws that are benevolent and avoid the temptation of bribes from large companies? Is it really ok to stop a terminal cancer patient from trying a new drug even if he knows he will die 100% without it? Is it okay to stop him from taking it, allow a million to die during the ten year approval process in a similar way, and finally discover that the drug works? Doesn't that mean the FDA just killed a million people by preventing the drug from being tried by terminally ill patients?

We should be free to make our own decisions, however irrational they may be, because if i can't make decisions that make me happy you certainly can't be expected to make decisions that work out any better. Doing this is like assuming that leaders would be Gods, and forcing me to avoid irrationality will make me happier.