{"id":465,"date":"2009-01-28T13:37:03","date_gmt":"2009-01-28T21:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=465"},"modified":"2009-01-29T18:45:34","modified_gmt":"2009-01-30T02:45:34","slug":"cpsia-because-otherwise-companies-will-kill-their-customers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/cpsia-because-otherwise-companies-will-kill-their-customers\/","title":{"rendered":"CPSIA: Because otherwise companies will kill their customers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forbes has been highlighting the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act in a series of articles by Walter Olson<\/a> and Paul Rubin<\/a>.\u00a0 These articles provide an excellent example of regulatory overkill, and how doing “for the children” invariably ends up doing it to those children’s parents<\/a>, with little noticeable benefit for the children themselves.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the safety nannies<\/a> are keeping the pressure on.\u00a0 In a typical “it’s for the kids” logic, consumer advocates continue to point out that (a) lead is bad, and (b) the bill passed by an overwhelming majority (“we’re all parents and grandparents”).\u00a0 They also helpfully point out that some congressmen, responding to howls of protest, have already offered some advice to the CPSC on how to keep the implementation costs down, advice it’s not clear the CPSC will be able to follow.\u00a0 And don’t you know, those business ingrates are still not happy.<\/p>\n

What the consumer advocates ignore is that this law simply makes no sense.\u00a0 It is founded on the principle that people who sell things to kids are indifferent to any injury they might cause.\u00a0 Toy makers, who completely depend on the happiness of their little customers, happen to know lead is bad.\u00a0 That’s why Mattel reacted the way they did when they found out.\u00a0 What keeps them awake at night is not the possibility of offending the effete sensibilities of the safety nannies, it’s the possibility of losing their customers.<\/p>\n

And, also, if the number of congressmen rushing to pass a bill in hysteria is the measure of a bill’s virtue, then my troubled, liberal friends should have no problem with this<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forbes has been highlighting the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act in a series of articles by Walter Olson and Paul Rubin.\u00a0 These articles provide an excellent example of regulatory overkill, and how doing “for the children” invariably ends up doing it to those children’s parents, with little noticeable benefit for the children themselves. Meanwhile, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-invisible-trade-offs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":469,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions\/469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}