Have I misunderstood Libertarianism?

[Tiberius]

That just breaks my brain with stupid.

1) By your statement, bad food will still be out there ready to be sold. It's nigh impossible to get information to everyone, so it's inevitable that someone would still eat this bad food. The FDA prevents it from ever getting into circulation.

2) So basically, someone has to get sick, potentially sick and die, for a lawsuit to change the way that company does business. Let's not forget that big companies have more money for lawsuits than the average Joe Schmoe who had the misfortune of eating bad food. The FDA would try to prevent that food getting into the population, and if it did, the FDA would has far more resources to make the company pay than an average person.

Once again proving that libertarianism is nothing but supremely idealistic notions that ignore the propensity of businesses and companies to try and cheat the average person to make a buck.

If regular market forces worked without regulation, I'd accept that. They don't. The banks failed because of continued de-regulation. That's just a fact.

The FDA don't check every single product, they check a sample. Bad food gets out with regulation anyway. Bernard Matthews imported infected turkey and caused an outbreak of avian flu in the UK: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Bernar...1_outbreak

Granted, that is in the UK, but a quick search for "FDA failures" brought up this: http://health.msn.com/health-topics/arti...246&page=2

As for your second point, I disagree. The point of watchdog groups is to check facilities as well, and perform the same safety tests the government does. If a company does not open up their facilities to inspection, they get a bad grade, and they lose customers. If they open up their facilities to inspection, and they fail the inspection, they get a bad grade, and they lose customers.

Everything about the FDA would be mirrored in Libertarianism, just done by the people rather than the government. The result of watchdog group reports could form a basis for legal action taken by the government over violation of civil liberties.