One doesn't have to believe something is perfect to use it to refute absurdities.

Paul R defends the prison-industrial complex and killing people via paternalism

Just as abolishing the FDA is the way to protect public health. Because it seriously impairs the freedom of those whose lives it saves.

Actually, the FDA has killed people. It does this by not permitting them -- even when they are terminally ill and have nothing to lose -- from using drugs or techniques not yet approved by Their Protectors.

This is what's known as a red herring. It has nothing at all to do with the point I made. Of course the FDA could be improved. And yes, it certainly has killed some people, while protecting many more. (The same is true of vaccines, btw. And every so often someone dies because they were wearing a seatbelt. It's called "trade-offs." Mature, informed people know about trade-offs as a matter of course.) Advocates of sensible regulation have no problem at all with the notion that regulation can be done better. It's the ideological enemies of regulation who can't tolerate discussion of how markets can be improved by sensible regulation.

The FDA also is directly implicated in the prison-industrial system fueled by the War on (some) Drugs, and the corollary war on doctors who deal with patients in severe and intractable pain.

With hundreds of thousands of inner city blacks imprisoned in the war on drugs, the FDA's role is tertiary, at best. It's certainly wrong-headed. But Mona's overhyping the FDA's role is simply ludicrous. The point of such hyperbole is to distract attention from sensible solutions, such as changing the FDA regulations and how they are implemented.

Odd how the "my body, my choice" mantra flies out the window for some leftists when one of their beloved regulatory agencies is at issue.

I have no problem criticizing the FDA. Nor does any other leftist I've ever talked to about it. Your hyperbolic--and, in this case, downright false--accusations simply underscore my point: your opposition to regulation is ideologically blind and heedless of facts. You defend abstractions regardless of the human cost. The human cost only matters to you as a means to argue for your abstractions.

As with the FDA, so with the FCC, or the courts. Media monopolization is a direct result of unregulated markets. This is one of the larger flies in the libertarian argument--one might even call it the Mothra in the libertarian argument: free markets give rise to monopolies which in turn destroy free markets. That's why we need anti-trust laws and other regulations to prevent anti-competetive practices and promote healthy competition.

Going back to Mona's earlier post (I passed over this the first time round):

Moreover, the reality is that this kewl Internet thingie -- unregulated and free -- is becoming, and will continue to become, the corrective. Unless, of course, The Regulators put a stop to it.

The internet, of course, was created by the government. Let me say that again: The internet, of course, was created by the government.

And not just the internet, but virtually everything that underpins it. Massive government investment is what made the computer revolution possible, every step of the way. Either through direct investment in R&D, or through creating the original market for the products developed, or through subsidies for early entrants--the list goes on and on and on.

Fast-forward to now:

It's the monopolies who want to constrain that freedom by charging those who can afford to pay for first class data delivery and penalizing everyone else. And it's the would-be regulators, under the banner of "net nuetrality," who want to preserve that freedom.

In short, Mona: everything you "know" is wrong. That's what happens when an ideology has you, rather than you having an ideology.