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The 117th United States [Congress]

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Posts

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited May 2022
    Lanz wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Heffling wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Fencingsax wrote: »
    Magell wrote: »
    Xeddicus wrote: »
    Magell wrote: »
    DarkPrimus wrote: »



    On the SAME day, Republicans both held a press conference blaming Biden for the baby formula shortage *AND* voted against a bill that would ensure access to baby formula amid a shortage.
    NEW: The House approves $28 million to respond to the baby formula shortage by a vote of 231-192.

    Every NO vote was a Republican.
    NEW: The House has voted 222-203 in favor of the Domestic Terrorism Prevention bill. Only one Republican, Adam Kinzinger, voted in favor. All other Republicans voted against it.

    Pro-Life party my ass.

    No one reads these bills do they. The "Baby Formula" bill had almost nothing to do with baby formula. It gave the FDA $28 million to hire more staff. Who will not be making/buying baby formula. And who had $100 million few weeks ago approved already. So basically they're throwing money around and saying they're doing something while not doing anything but spending money. The GOP did approve a bill to allow people on WIC to get baby formula, something that will actually help.

    And the 'Domestic terrorism' bill, well, if you insist on calling trespassing an insurrection and destroying cities protests it's no wonder some people don't have much stock in the need or ability of a "domestic terrorism" anything.

    The white guys who leave a manifesto about fears of the Great Replacement then drive three hours to shoot up a majoruty black establishment are the terrorists.

    Plus people on WIC already get formula, the problem is there isn't any formula for them to get.

    That would be why we are importing a whole bunch of it

    Which was made more challenging thanks to NAFTA 2

    At least to that, Biden had the right response by invoking the Defense Act so that duties could be waived on imported formula. The root problem that needs to be addressed is the lack of inspectors at the FDA that is caused by underfunding, which is also being addressed. Short of nationalizing baby food manufacture, I don't think there is a ton more that the government could be doing right now.

    Plant leadership and executives should go to jail for this. Unfortunately I'm not confident they will.

    Well, antitrust enforcement forcing some of the brands to be spun off as separate standalone companies to create an actually competitive market rather than an oligopoly. Same for input sources. But that's a long term solution to help prevent these conditions from recurring, not a way to get food on the shelves by Tuesday.

    You can't use anti-trust to just transform one factory into two. And you should really consider if the across the board price increase would be worth it even if you could.

    Price increase? What? Competition drives price down. That's like, the one central tenant of capitalism. And why enforcing anti-trust is important. Ideally anti-trust would be enforced before this became an issue. And if it is an issue of a single supplier monopoly, then it either needs a ton of regulation or needs to become a public good.

    Efficiencies of scale also drive prices down. Two factories each producing half of what the single factory did but each paying the full amount of overhead for running a factory means the cost of production will be higher.

    This sounds like a fundamental misunderstanding of how it would work. If those factories are in competition with each other, it would drive the price down. Each would be dealing with the same overhead and would not pass the buck along to the consumer in order to have the more competitive price. You are also throwing in a new assumption into the mix to try and gainstay my point, that you have two factories running at half capacity.

    I literally just explained how this is wrong. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how this works. If factories compete with each other it only drives the price down IF there is a difference between the sales price and the marginal production cost. If there are two factories producing the same total quantity of goods as compared to one factory and the one factory is the efficient number then "overhead" is higher and the "competitive price" is higher under two factories. This produces a monopoly situation but only insomuch as they can keep prices low enough to prevent entry into the market. And there are loads of easy ways... one of which we are currently doing, to efficiently curb that monopoly power.

    The company did not build a big huge factory because it was a bad idea. One factory was built because one factory was more efficient than two factories. If two factories was as efficient or more efficient the company would have built two factories in order to make more money (or in this case to defray capital costs and allow more efficient spool up/spool down and also to prevent issues like the one we're seeing).
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    This is… not strictly true. The mechanism that drives price down in an efficient market is competition sure but this requires that the efficient factory size (or efficient number of factories) is sufficiently small as to allow multiple competing brands. Production over the whole must be constant returns to scale over a large enough segment of the market. *

    The natural state of a market where the efficient number of factories is 1 is a monopoly. Competition here does not produce lower overall prices it simply produces a monopoly.

    HamHamJ is entirely correct. Anti-trust is not going to turn 1 factory into 2. And making it so that will increase prices so long as prices were reasonably close to marginal production. And they probably were because while there is a potential oligopoly** in supply there was also a monopsony in purchasing (which pushes prices down). If we split 1 factory into 2 the monopsony “cannot” push prices under marginal production so if marginal production goes up (which it will) then so will prices. You might say that the govt monopsony power wasn’t so strong but this probably isn’t the case. The WIC purchase agreement basically determines the market.

    *decreasing marginal returns is the mechanism that causes extra factories to be made, and is not a feature inherent in production with multiple factories. The decreasing marginal utility is a necessary assumption in the demand side not a necessity in production. There are lots of good reasons to expect that production functions are CES.

    **worth nothing that is is pretty hard to sustain oligopoly with 3 or 4 producers rather than 2.

    Antitrust enforcement means that we stop 4 factories from becoming 1. It's a preventative measure first.

    Second, if the issue is a current monopoly/oligopoly of a necessary good (which baby formula undoubtedly is) with a limited amount of infrastructure then the government should just fucking take it over and transform it into a utility type service.

    No. Anti-trust enforcement means we stop 4 factories being owned by 4 companies to be 4 factories owned by 1 company.


    There isn't a large externality or informational issue with baby formula. There is no need for the government to make it into a utility.
    Stop being obtuse. It's both.

    I am not being obtuse. Anti-trust does not mean we enforce inefficient factories. It means we prevent mergers. If there is only one company in the market because the others went out of business because they could not compete we do not step in to help those companies. (unless the reason they could not compete was anti-competitive behavior but there does not appear to be anti-competitive behavior here AND the primary way in which can can mitigate monopoly is by price fixing... IE almost exactly the monopsony effect WIC purchasing has...)

    Edit: We will step in when the situations are separable. In order to prevent vertical integration. And we will potentially step in if one company owns all the production through multiple factories. But we very much do not prevent monopoly as a result of efficient factory size

    Goum I feel like part of the problem here is you approach this shit like it’s a textbook hypothetical, and only in the realm of perfectly behaved actors and perfect information as presented in a textbook hypothetical, instead of the messy reality of how capitalist structures actually work in practice today.

    You’re arguing from the position of an ideal instead of the actual reality of a corrupt system where profit and power are placed at the forefront of corporate decision making (see for example the company using its profits on stock buybacks instead of replacing machinery that desperately needed replacing, which lead to the culturating of cronobacter that got into the finished formula, etc.).

    That’s why Munkus is finding your argument obtuse; you seem to want to fall back on the idealized form of what an MBA course would teach you instead of the actual facts on the ground.

    when I got my business degree the instruction was mostly like... not this actually, it was all redundancy is good, paying your employees a lot is good, being flexible with schedule was good - building resilience lets you get through hard times as an organization without major shakeups

    the director of the program was like, an old VP of IBM, and her whole deal was like "yeah okay on paper running everything to the wire including your employees is good for profits, but that causes things to snap during hard times, and isn't ethical"

    but in reality in the corporate world there's no such thing as ethics and everything is run like this quarter is the end of history and must take all priority, until the next one starts

    override367 on
  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    R-dem wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    I prefer Shryke's version of blame the inspectors because it points to the actual root cause: our inspectors are underfunded.

    But, no, I'm still not willing to give big corporate businesses a pass on being shady as shit and producing sub-par or even deadly product through neglect and pursuit of the almighty dollar just because "The government should have caught them!"

    No one is giving them a pass though. I don't know where the hell this idea is coming from. No one has ever said give the company a pass.

    Agree to disagree. The past page and a half was a lot of carrying water and well yes but.

    No. There was discussion of whether or not breaking up the company in question for anti-trust reasons would be a good option and it spun off of that the solution. At the end of the last page it was explained that the solution was to increase funding for the FDA and for border inspections. There was no water carrying here it was strictly a discussion of the industrial structure.

    You took this to mean that the company wasn’t at fault and reframed the entire discussion about the morality of the c suite instead of how to fix the issue. There was, I think one post that vaguely pushes in this direction, and it was long after the reframing… and you didn’t reply to it you replied to others which did were trying to explain to you that your reframing was bad.

    I get it. The world is easier to grok when there is a a group of evil people who can be punished and put away to solve all our issues. But that is not how things work. We solve systemic issues with systemic solutions. But we have to understand how the system works before we can do that. And sometimes that means explaining the effects of policies that are proposed.

    wbBv3fj.png
  • ShadowfireShadowfire Vermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered User regular
    Every time someone says "this is the most important quarter/holiday season ever" I die a little inside.

    WiiU: Windrunner ; Guild Wars 2: Shadowfire.3940 ; PSN: Bradcopter
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited May 2022
    Shadowfire wrote: »
    Every time someone says "this is the most important quarter/holiday season ever" I die a little inside.

    I was actually told Friday that "this is the most important quarter in the company's history"

    motherfucker we opened 4 new offices last quarter and created a new division, there is nothing going on on this quarter except getting all the new stuff onboard and some internships

    override367 on
  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    I prefer Shryke's version of blame the inspectors because it points to the actual root cause: our inspectors are underfunded.

    But, no, I'm still not willing to give big corporate businesses a pass on being shady as shit and producing sub-par or even deadly product through neglect and pursuit of the almighty dollar just because "The government should have caught them!"

    No one is giving them a pass though. I don't know where the hell this idea is coming from. No one has ever said give the company a pass.

    Agree to disagree. The past page and a half was a lot of carrying water and well yes but.

    No. There was discussion of whether or not breaking up the company in question for anti-trust reasons would be a good option and it spun off of that the solution. At the end of the last page it was explained that the solution was to increase funding for the FDA and for border inspections. There was no water carrying here it was strictly a discussion of the industrial structure.

    You took this to mean that the company wasn’t at fault and reframed the entire discussion about the morality of the c suite instead of how to fix the issue. There was, I think one post that vaguely pushes in this direction, and it was long after the reframing… and you didn’t reply to it you replied to others which did were trying to explain to you that your reframing was bad.

    I get it. The world is easier to grok when there is a a group of evil people who can be punished and put away to solve all our issues. But that is not how things work. We solve systemic issues with systemic solutions. But we have to understand how the system works before we can do that. And sometimes that means explaining the effects of policies that are proposed.

    No I’m fairly certain we can blame the vast majority of the systemic societal ills on the whims of rich people wanting more money.

  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    I prefer Shryke's version of blame the inspectors because it points to the actual root cause: our inspectors are underfunded.

    But, no, I'm still not willing to give big corporate businesses a pass on being shady as shit and producing sub-par or even deadly product through neglect and pursuit of the almighty dollar just because "The government should have caught them!"

    No one is giving them a pass though. I don't know where the hell this idea is coming from. No one has ever said give the company a pass.

    Agree to disagree. The past page and a half was a lot of carrying water and well yes but.

    No. There was discussion of whether or not breaking up the company in question for anti-trust reasons would be a good option and it spun off of that the solution. At the end of the last page it was explained that the solution was to increase funding for the FDA and for border inspections. There was no water carrying here it was strictly a discussion of the industrial structure.

    You took this to mean that the company wasn’t at fault and reframed the entire discussion about the morality of the c suite instead of how to fix the issue. There was, I think one post that vaguely pushes in this direction, and it was long after the reframing… and you didn’t reply to it you replied to others which did were trying to explain to you that your reframing was bad.

    I get it. The world is easier to grok when there is a a group of evil people who can be punished and put away to solve all our issues. But that is not how things work. We solve systemic issues with systemic solutions. But we have to understand how the system works before we can do that. And sometimes that means explaining the effects of policies that are proposed.

    No I’m fairly certain we can blame the vast majority of the systemic societal ills on the whims of rich people wanting more money.

    Oh good just put them in prison and then the world will magically fix itself right? We’ve seen where that goes, no thank you.

    The difference is that I don’t give a shit who is evil I want a system that works well regardless.

    wbBv3fj.png
  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    I prefer Shryke's version of blame the inspectors because it points to the actual root cause: our inspectors are underfunded.

    But, no, I'm still not willing to give big corporate businesses a pass on being shady as shit and producing sub-par or even deadly product through neglect and pursuit of the almighty dollar just because "The government should have caught them!"

    No one is giving them a pass though. I don't know where the hell this idea is coming from. No one has ever said give the company a pass.

    Agree to disagree. The past page and a half was a lot of carrying water and well yes but.

    No. There was discussion of whether or not breaking up the company in question for anti-trust reasons would be a good option and it spun off of that the solution. At the end of the last page it was explained that the solution was to increase funding for the FDA and for border inspections. There was no water carrying here it was strictly a discussion of the industrial structure.

    You took this to mean that the company wasn’t at fault and reframed the entire discussion about the morality of the c suite instead of how to fix the issue. There was, I think one post that vaguely pushes in this direction, and it was long after the reframing… and you didn’t reply to it you replied to others which did were trying to explain to you that your reframing was bad.

    I get it. The world is easier to grok when there is a a group of evil people who can be punished and put away to solve all our issues. But that is not how things work. We solve systemic issues with systemic solutions. But we have to understand how the system works before we can do that. And sometimes that means explaining the effects of policies that are proposed.

    No I’m fairly certain we can blame the vast majority of the systemic societal ills on the whims of rich people wanting more money.

    Oh good just put them in prison and then the world will magically fix itself right? We’ve seen where that goes, no thank you.

    The difference is that I don’t give a shit who is evil I want a system that works well regardless.

    You accuse people of oversimplifying things but man it is like your go to rhetorical tactic.

    wq09t4opzrlc.jpg
  • Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Registered User regular
    We have a bad incentive plan

  • Munkus BeaverMunkus Beaver You don't have to attend every argument you are invited to. Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPA regular
    R-dem wrote: »
    I prefer Shryke's version of blame the inspectors because it points to the actual root cause: our inspectors are underfunded.

    But, no, I'm still not willing to give big corporate businesses a pass on being shady as shit and producing sub-par or even deadly product through neglect and pursuit of the almighty dollar just because "The government should have caught them!"

    There's a concept in law that'll help here. It's called "Proximate Cause." Because yes, there are a ton of things that all work together to cause a particular event to occur. You can assign like, 10% of the blame to the agency, 25% of blame to congress, and the other 65% to the damn Corporation who done killed babies for greed. The corporation is the proximate cause of the injury, not the inspectors.

    Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
  • IncenjucarIncenjucar VChatter Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    There's a whole ecosystem to corruption filled with all kinds of selfish assholes. The regulators themselves are usually just victims of it.

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    R-dem wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    I prefer Shryke's version of blame the inspectors because it points to the actual root cause: our inspectors are underfunded.

    But, no, I'm still not willing to give big corporate businesses a pass on being shady as shit and producing sub-par or even deadly product through neglect and pursuit of the almighty dollar just because "The government should have caught them!"

    No one is giving them a pass though. I don't know where the hell this idea is coming from. No one has ever said give the company a pass.

    Agree to disagree. The past page and a half was a lot of carrying water and well yes but.

    No, that's complete bullshit. People, including all of us right here on this forum, talk all the time about the failures of regulatory agencies and no on is ever like "Saying the IRS is underfunded is just shifting the blame from rich tax cheats to the IRS". Because we all know that's not what someone means when they talk about how the IRS is underfunded and it leads to people cheating society out of money. So I've no clue why suddenly people are acting like anyone would be saying that now.

  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    Problem with regulation is at this point in time, even if you have the FDA properly funded, the only actual repercussions a company will actually face is “pay this fine that is so low relative to the revenue stream of the company in question that it’s just a cost of doing business.”

    The shit has no teeth.

    waNkm4k.jpg?1
  • zagdrobzagdrob Registered User regular
    The FDA has the power to shut down manufacturing indefinitely? Hence this being an entire discussion.

    That's not no teeth. The problem is it got to this point because there aren't enough regulators for the intermediate steps.

  • R-demR-dem Registered User regular
    R-dem wrote: »
    I prefer Shryke's version of blame the inspectors because it points to the actual root cause: our inspectors are underfunded.

    But, no, I'm still not willing to give big corporate businesses a pass on being shady as shit and producing sub-par or even deadly product through neglect and pursuit of the almighty dollar just because "The government should have caught them!"

    There's a concept in law that'll help here. It's called "Proximate Cause." Because yes, there are a ton of things that all work together to cause a particular event to occur. You can assign like, 10% of the blame to the agency, 25% of blame to congress, and the other 65% to the damn Corporation who done killed babies for greed. The corporation is the proximate cause of the injury, not the inspectors.

    This is a good post

  • monikermoniker Registered User regular
    edited May 2022
    zagdrob wrote: »
    The FDA has the power to shut down manufacturing indefinitely? Hence this being an entire discussion.

    That's not no teeth. The problem is it got to this point because there aren't enough regulators for the intermediate steps.

    And because there isn't any redundancy in the system when shit goes wrong, because 4 companies control 90% of the market, and run them with zero margin.

    Which is where my point to needing to break them up into, say 8 companies with no more than 20% market share each, is meant to address the inevitability that something will go wrong at one facility between now and the heat death of the universe. More inspectors and more inspections will hopefully catch things quicker so resolutions can be made faster with less downtime so a catastrophe won't unfold, but remaining with a single point of failure for ~40% of formula sku's remains unacceptably fragile for the food supply of newborns. Even with a fully funded and staffed FDA, and fewer import restrictions. It'd be a pretty stupid idea if we were talking about peanut butter, and nobody is going to die if they have to go without a PBJ for a few months.

    moniker on
  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    I prefer Shryke's version of blame the inspectors because it points to the actual root cause: our inspectors are underfunded.

    But, no, I'm still not willing to give big corporate businesses a pass on being shady as shit and producing sub-par or even deadly product through neglect and pursuit of the almighty dollar just because "The government should have caught them!"

    No one is giving them a pass though. I don't know where the hell this idea is coming from. No one has ever said give the company a pass.

    Agree to disagree. The past page and a half was a lot of carrying water and well yes but.

    No. There was discussion of whether or not breaking up the company in question for anti-trust reasons would be a good option and it spun off of that the solution. At the end of the last page it was explained that the solution was to increase funding for the FDA and for border inspections. There was no water carrying here it was strictly a discussion of the industrial structure.

    You took this to mean that the company wasn’t at fault and reframed the entire discussion about the morality of the c suite instead of how to fix the issue. There was, I think one post that vaguely pushes in this direction, and it was long after the reframing… and you didn’t reply to it you replied to others which did were trying to explain to you that your reframing was bad.

    I get it. The world is easier to grok when there is a a group of evil people who can be punished and put away to solve all our issues. But that is not how things work. We solve systemic issues with systemic solutions. But we have to understand how the system works before we can do that. And sometimes that means explaining the effects of policies that are proposed.

    No I’m fairly certain we can blame the vast majority of the systemic societal ills on the whims of rich people wanting more money.

    Oh good just put them in prison and then the world will magically fix itself right? We’ve seen where that goes, no thank you.

    The difference is that I don’t give a shit who is evil I want a system that works well regardless.

    You accuse people of oversimplifying things but man it is like your go to rhetorical tactic.

    I did not accuse him of oversimplying things. I said his solution was bad. If you think I am oversimplifying things you can ask for an explanation. Because like... if there was any problem here it was not that things were too simple. I left a number of things unsaid that could have been explained but i did not feel like i needed to because i assumed people understood at a base level.

    wbBv3fj.png
  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    zagdrob wrote: »
    The FDA has the power to shut down manufacturing indefinitely? Hence this being an entire discussion.

    That's not no teeth. The problem is it got to this point because there aren't enough regulators for the intermediate steps.

    And now we’re back to “whoops! Not enough formula!” Because you’ve shut the plant down indefinitely.

    Which brings us back to needing more plants, with redundant capacity to make up for shortfalls like this for a staple food source for infants.

    Like, part of the issue too is they’re not shutting the plant down as punishment; the plant is shut down because it’s literally a public health hazard. And shit gets to this point in part because most companies know they can skate by when it comes to violations piling up; there’s a reason for the old saying about using fines as only being a punishment for the poor. They just factor that shit into the costs of doing business.

    It’s obvious that we need more regulators, with proper funding, but that in and of itself isn’t a sufficient solution to essentially putting all our eggs in so few baskets, especially when anything short of “you have created a massive public health hazard that has necessitated an emergency shut down” is met with what are effectively slaps on the wrist.

    waNkm4k.jpg?1
  • R-demR-dem Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    I prefer Shryke's version of blame the inspectors because it points to the actual root cause: our inspectors are underfunded.

    But, no, I'm still not willing to give big corporate businesses a pass on being shady as shit and producing sub-par or even deadly product through neglect and pursuit of the almighty dollar just because "The government should have caught them!"

    No one is giving them a pass though. I don't know where the hell this idea is coming from. No one has ever said give the company a pass.

    Agree to disagree. The past page and a half was a lot of carrying water and well yes but.

    No. There was discussion of whether or not breaking up the company in question for anti-trust reasons would be a good option and it spun off of that the solution. At the end of the last page it was explained that the solution was to increase funding for the FDA and for border inspections. There was no water carrying here it was strictly a discussion of the industrial structure.

    You took this to mean that the company wasn’t at fault and reframed the entire discussion about the morality of the c suite instead of how to fix the issue. There was, I think one post that vaguely pushes in this direction, and it was long after the reframing… and you didn’t reply to it you replied to others which did were trying to explain to you that your reframing was bad.

    I get it. The world is easier to grok when there is a a group of evil people who can be punished and put away to solve all our issues. But that is not how things work. We solve systemic issues with systemic solutions. But we have to understand how the system works before we can do that. And sometimes that means explaining the effects of policies that are proposed.

    No I’m fairly certain we can blame the vast majority of the systemic societal ills on the whims of rich people wanting more money.

    Oh good just put them in prison and then the world will magically fix itself right? We’ve seen where that goes, no thank you.

    The difference is that I don’t give a shit who is evil I want a system that works well regardless.

    You accuse people of oversimplifying things but man it is like your go to rhetorical tactic.

    I did not accuse him of oversimplying things. I said his solution was bad. If you think I am oversimplifying things you can ask for an explanation. Because like... if there was any problem here it was not that things were too simple. I left a number of things unsaid that could have been explained but i did not feel like i needed to because i assumed people understood at a base level.

    I literally said I thought the root cause was FDA underfundage. I did not offer a solution past a much earlier comment that formula is important enough that an angry leftie like me would love to see it freely distributed to anyone who needed it.

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    moniker wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    I'd argue that running more facilities and just not having a single point of failure is important. I suspect a large part of the costs are up-front costs - it's more efficient to build a single big facility, but not necessarily to run it (that is, having 10 lines in one building or 10 split between 2 has similar operating costs. And also may actually save money due to distribution costs if they're on opposite sides of the country).

    Which isn't to say the other things aren't also critical issues. Just that a single point of failure is a bad idea and I don't think it's actually saving money anyways. Concentration of production lines is parallel to the general issues with unchecked mergers I think, related but not quite the same? Or maybe just less visible mergers with how food production works and plants may produce for multiple companies.

    It's probably saving money. There's not much reason to think that running two separate facilities is the cheaper option here.

    It's not really related to mergers either because this same kind of thing could happen even if more companies were in the market. You could still end up with each of those companies running only one facility because it's cheaper then each company having multiple facilities and producing less at each.

    The likelihood that all of them would simultaneously contaminate their product, or get hit by some black swan outage at the same time is vanishingly smaller than something going wrong in a single place, though. If you have more providers the overall market/ system is better able to absorb shocks (like gross negligence) by ramping up production in the other, unaffected facilities. One plant getting shutdown just should not be capable of resulting in ~40% of formula being out of stock. That it does is a systems design failure that needs more than just extra inspections to address.

    Again, what if this wasn't something as relatively easily fixable as a bacterial contamination that requires disinfecting the whole place but keeps the production capacity otherwise viable? What if a fire burned the place down?

    Sure, if you are concerned about dealing with some unlikely event and want to solve it with domestic product instead of imports, then you can build in domestic redundancy instead. That redundancy is probably going to lead to higher production costs because it's probably more efficient to just produce it all in one factory.

  • MarathonMarathon Registered User regular
    I think just changing the law so that importing formula from outside the US is a more realistic solution. There is a massive cost that goes into the building, equipping, maintenance and just running these kinds of facilities, the idea of splitting 4 into 8 maybe sounds good on paper. But I don’t think it would work.

  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    Kyle Griffin is an executive producer at MSNBC


    Rep. James Clyburn to the Washington Post: "The country is in danger of imploding. Democracy is in danger of disintegrating. And I don't know why people feel that this country is insulated from the historical trends ... Maybe autocracy is the future of the country."

    I have no words and my emotional state reading this is that gif of spongebob at a diner booth with a cup of coffee

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  • Munkus BeaverMunkus Beaver You don't have to attend every argument you are invited to. Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPA regular
    zagdrob wrote: »
    The FDA has the power to shut down manufacturing indefinitely? Hence this being an entire discussion.

    That's not no teeth. The problem is it got to this point because there aren't enough regulators for the intermediate steps.

    I think the point is that to have real teeth to prevent this from happening, you need a punishment that these bigwigs would actually fear. They don't give a shit about fines, and having the plant shut down is an acceptable risk.

    Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    edited May 2022
    moniker wrote: »
    zagdrob wrote: »
    The FDA has the power to shut down manufacturing indefinitely? Hence this being an entire discussion.

    That's not no teeth. The problem is it got to this point because there aren't enough regulators for the intermediate steps.

    And because there isn't any redundancy in the system when shit goes wrong, because 4 companies control 90% of the market, and run them with zero margin.

    Which is where my point to needing to break them up into, say 8 companies with no more than 20% market share each, is meant to address the inevitability that something will go wrong at one facility between now and the heat death of the universe. More inspectors and more inspections will hopefully catch things quicker so resolutions can be made faster with less downtime so a catastrophe won't unfold, but remaining with a single point of failure for ~40% of formula sku's remains unacceptably fragile for the food supply of newborns. Even with a fully funded and staffed FDA, and fewer import restrictions. It'd be a pretty stupid idea if we were talking about peanut butter, and nobody is going to die if they have to go without a PBJ for a few months.

    But there are other, better ways, to deal with this. Which we have explained. They're better in that they do not increase prices in general operation, easier in that the mechanisms that control them are a more finely tunable lever, and faster in that we can implement them almost immediately.

    Are you going to tell me that you would not be making the same argument if a company that controlled 20% of the market had this kind of failure? Because i just can't see it. There is nothing in your argument that seems to not also apply if 20% of formula SKU failed. Or 10% of formula SKU failed.

    Because what actually happened was that 2.6%* of the global production had a problem. And our inability to import is what led to this being a significant disruption in supply.

    *An estimate, using numbers from here. I would like some more confirmed data but that is a lot more work than i am willing to do.

    Goumindong on
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  • FencingsaxFencingsax It is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understanding GNU Terry PratchettRegistered User regular
    zagdrob wrote: »
    The FDA has the power to shut down manufacturing indefinitely? Hence this being an entire discussion.

    That's not no teeth. The problem is it got to this point because there aren't enough regulators for the intermediate steps.

    I think the point is that to have real teeth to prevent this from happening, you need a punishment that these bigwigs would actually fear. They don't give a shit about fines, and having the plant shut down is an acceptable risk.

    I think it's only an acceptable risk because they know the FDA is stretched so thin, so the instance of an inspection accomplishing anything is smaller. I believe the fines can ramp up if the company in question decides to not comply with the letter.

  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited May 2022
    Goumindong wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    zagdrob wrote: »
    The FDA has the power to shut down manufacturing indefinitely? Hence this being an entire discussion.

    That's not no teeth. The problem is it got to this point because there aren't enough regulators for the intermediate steps.

    And because there isn't any redundancy in the system when shit goes wrong, because 4 companies control 90% of the market, and run them with zero margin.

    Which is where my point to needing to break them up into, say 8 companies with no more than 20% market share each, is meant to address the inevitability that something will go wrong at one facility between now and the heat death of the universe. More inspectors and more inspections will hopefully catch things quicker so resolutions can be made faster with less downtime so a catastrophe won't unfold, but remaining with a single point of failure for ~40% of formula sku's remains unacceptably fragile for the food supply of newborns. Even with a fully funded and staffed FDA, and fewer import restrictions. It'd be a pretty stupid idea if we were talking about peanut butter, and nobody is going to die if they have to go without a PBJ for a few months.

    But there are other, better ways, to deal with this. Which we have explained. They're better in that they do not increase prices in general operation, easier in that the mechanisms that control them are a more finely tunable lever, and faster in that we can implement them almost immediately.

    Are you going to tell me that you would not be making the same argument if a company that controlled 20% of the market had this kind of failure? Because i just can't see it. There is nothing in your argument that seems to not also apply if 20% of formula SKU failed. Or 10% of formula SKU failed.

    Because what actually happened was that 2.6%* of the global production had a problem. And our inability to import is what led to this being a significant disruption in supply.

    *An estimate, using numbers from here. I would like some more confirmed data but that is a lot more work than i am willing to do.

    How is it they have excess supply to spare such that we’re able to import it to cover our shortfall?

    What decisions were made abroad such that this was a feasible option to sell formula to America, presumably without then causing their own local shortages as we buy up theirs to make up for the shortfall here?

    Lanz on
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  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Lanz wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    zagdrob wrote: »
    The FDA has the power to shut down manufacturing indefinitely? Hence this being an entire discussion.

    That's not no teeth. The problem is it got to this point because there aren't enough regulators for the intermediate steps.

    And because there isn't any redundancy in the system when shit goes wrong, because 4 companies control 90% of the market, and run them with zero margin.

    Which is where my point to needing to break them up into, say 8 companies with no more than 20% market share each, is meant to address the inevitability that something will go wrong at one facility between now and the heat death of the universe. More inspectors and more inspections will hopefully catch things quicker so resolutions can be made faster with less downtime so a catastrophe won't unfold, but remaining with a single point of failure for ~40% of formula sku's remains unacceptably fragile for the food supply of newborns. Even with a fully funded and staffed FDA, and fewer import restrictions. It'd be a pretty stupid idea if we were talking about peanut butter, and nobody is going to die if they have to go without a PBJ for a few months.

    But there are other, better ways, to deal with this. Which we have explained. They're better in that they do not increase prices in general operation, easier in that the mechanisms that control them are a more finely tunable lever, and faster in that we can implement them almost immediately.

    Are you going to tell me that you would not be making the same argument if a company that controlled 20% of the market had this kind of failure? Because i just can't see it. There is nothing in your argument that seems to not also apply if 20% of formula SKU failed. Or 10% of formula SKU failed.

    Because what actually happened was that 2.6%* of the global production had a problem. And our inability to import is what led to this being a significant disruption in supply.

    *An estimate, using numbers from here. I would like some more confirmed data but that is a lot more work than i am willing to do.

    How is it they have excess supply to spare such that we’re able to import it to cover our shortfall?

    What decisions were made abroad such that this was a feasible option to sell formula to America, presumably without then causing their own local shortages as we buy up theirs to make up for the shortfall here?

    Nothing... Europe has a larger export market because its closer to demand. Their markets look pretty similar to our own with only a few companies controlling the vast majority of production. That is just the effect that a bigger market has...
    R-dem wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    I prefer Shryke's version of blame the inspectors because it points to the actual root cause: our inspectors are underfunded.

    But, no, I'm still not willing to give big corporate businesses a pass on being shady as shit and producing sub-par or even deadly product through neglect and pursuit of the almighty dollar just because "The government should have caught them!"

    No one is giving them a pass though. I don't know where the hell this idea is coming from. No one has ever said give the company a pass.

    Agree to disagree. The past page and a half was a lot of carrying water and well yes but.

    No. There was discussion of whether or not breaking up the company in question for anti-trust reasons would be a good option and it spun off of that the solution. At the end of the last page it was explained that the solution was to increase funding for the FDA and for border inspections. There was no water carrying here it was strictly a discussion of the industrial structure.

    You took this to mean that the company wasn’t at fault and reframed the entire discussion about the morality of the c suite instead of how to fix the issue. There was, I think one post that vaguely pushes in this direction, and it was long after the reframing… and you didn’t reply to it you replied to others which did were trying to explain to you that your reframing was bad.

    I get it. The world is easier to grok when there is a a group of evil people who can be punished and put away to solve all our issues. But that is not how things work. We solve systemic issues with systemic solutions. But we have to understand how the system works before we can do that. And sometimes that means explaining the effects of policies that are proposed.

    No I’m fairly certain we can blame the vast majority of the systemic societal ills on the whims of rich people wanting more money.

    Oh good just put them in prison and then the world will magically fix itself right? We’ve seen where that goes, no thank you.

    The difference is that I don’t give a shit who is evil I want a system that works well regardless.

    You accuse people of oversimplifying things but man it is like your go to rhetorical tactic.

    I did not accuse him of oversimplying things. I said his solution was bad. If you think I am oversimplifying things you can ask for an explanation. Because like... if there was any problem here it was not that things were too simple. I left a number of things unsaid that could have been explained but i did not feel like i needed to because i assumed people understood at a base level.

    I literally said I thought the root cause was FDA underfundage. I did not offer a solution past a much earlier comment that formula is important enough that an angry leftie like me would love to see it freely distributed to anyone who needed it.

    My comment was in relation to Jungleroom. Not you. Sorry for the confusion.

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  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    I prefer Shryke's version of blame the inspectors because it points to the actual root cause: our inspectors are underfunded.

    But, no, I'm still not willing to give big corporate businesses a pass on being shady as shit and producing sub-par or even deadly product through neglect and pursuit of the almighty dollar just because "The government should have caught them!"

    No one is giving them a pass though. I don't know where the hell this idea is coming from. No one has ever said give the company a pass.

    Agree to disagree. The past page and a half was a lot of carrying water and well yes but.

    No. There was discussion of whether or not breaking up the company in question for anti-trust reasons would be a good option and it spun off of that the solution. At the end of the last page it was explained that the solution was to increase funding for the FDA and for border inspections. There was no water carrying here it was strictly a discussion of the industrial structure.

    You took this to mean that the company wasn’t at fault and reframed the entire discussion about the morality of the c suite instead of how to fix the issue. There was, I think one post that vaguely pushes in this direction, and it was long after the reframing… and you didn’t reply to it you replied to others which did were trying to explain to you that your reframing was bad.

    I get it. The world is easier to grok when there is a a group of evil people who can be punished and put away to solve all our issues. But that is not how things work. We solve systemic issues with systemic solutions. But we have to understand how the system works before we can do that. And sometimes that means explaining the effects of policies that are proposed.

    No I’m fairly certain we can blame the vast majority of the systemic societal ills on the whims of rich people wanting more money.

    Oh good just put them in prison and then the world will magically fix itself right? We’ve seen where that goes, no thank you.

    The difference is that I don’t give a shit who is evil I want a system that works well regardless.

    You accuse people of oversimplifying things but man it is like your go to rhetorical tactic.

    I did not accuse him of oversimplying things. I said his solution was bad. If you think I am oversimplifying things you can ask for an explanation. Because like... if there was any problem here it was not that things were too simple. I left a number of things unsaid that could have been explained but i did not feel like i needed to because i assumed people understood at a base level.

    I never posed a solution. So your entire message was answering something nobody said.

  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    edited May 2022
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    R-dem wrote: »
    I prefer Shryke's version of blame the inspectors because it points to the actual root cause: our inspectors are underfunded.

    But, no, I'm still not willing to give big corporate businesses a pass on being shady as shit and producing sub-par or even deadly product through neglect and pursuit of the almighty dollar just because "The government should have caught them!"

    No one is giving them a pass though. I don't know where the hell this idea is coming from. No one has ever said give the company a pass.

    Agree to disagree. The past page and a half was a lot of carrying water and well yes but.

    No. There was discussion of whether or not breaking up the company in question for anti-trust reasons would be a good option and it spun off of that the solution. At the end of the last page it was explained that the solution was to increase funding for the FDA and for border inspections. There was no water carrying here it was strictly a discussion of the industrial structure.

    You took this to mean that the company wasn’t at fault and reframed the entire discussion about the morality of the c suite instead of how to fix the issue. There was, I think one post that vaguely pushes in this direction, and it was long after the reframing… and you didn’t reply to it you replied to others which did were trying to explain to you that your reframing was bad.

    I get it. The world is easier to grok when there is a a group of evil people who can be punished and put away to solve all our issues. But that is not how things work. We solve systemic issues with systemic solutions. But we have to understand how the system works before we can do that. And sometimes that means explaining the effects of policies that are proposed.

    No I’m fairly certain we can blame the vast majority of the systemic societal ills on the whims of rich people wanting more money.

    Oh good just put them in prison and then the world will magically fix itself right? We’ve seen where that goes, no thank you.

    The difference is that I don’t give a shit who is evil I want a system that works well regardless.

    You accuse people of oversimplifying things but man it is like your go to rhetorical tactic.

    I did not accuse him of oversimplying things. I said his solution was bad. If you think I am oversimplifying things you can ask for an explanation. Because like... if there was any problem here it was not that things were too simple. I left a number of things unsaid that could have been explained but i did not feel like i needed to because i assumed people understood at a base level.

    I never posed a solution. So your entire message was answering something nobody said.
    me wrote:
    I get it. The world is easier to grok when there is a a group of evil people who can be punished and put away to solve all our issues. But that is not how things work. We solve systemic issues with systemic solutions. But we have to understand how the system works before we can do that. And sometimes that means explaining the effects of policies that are proposed.
    you wrote:
    No I’m fairly certain we can blame the vast majority of the systemic societal ills on the whims of rich people wanting more money.

    Sure seems like you're supporting a very specific solution
    zagdrob wrote: »
    The FDA has the power to shut down manufacturing indefinitely? Hence this being an entire discussion.

    That's not no teeth. The problem is it got to this point because there aren't enough regulators for the intermediate steps.

    I think the point is that to have real teeth to prevent this from happening, you need a punishment that these bigwigs would actually fear. They don't give a shit about fines, and having the plant shut down is an acceptable risk.

    Shutting down the plant is a pretty significant cost. Its hard to say that big wigs only care about profit and then come back and say that they don't care about the profit from having shut down the plant for 6 months. If they're making 10% COC/year then this loss is about 5% of the capital cost of the plant and if you were making 1% extra(so to 11%) as a result of not doing the things that they should have been then its 5 years to make up the profit lost. Granted these are hypothetical numbers but i would be surprised to find that they under-estimate the recoup time as a result of failing to meet standards.

    Striking is a powerful tool because companies care about the ability to run their plants. There is just too much anecdata (and theory) surrounding this for me to believe they do not care about that without a good deal of evidence.

    Goumindong on
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  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    edited May 2022
    Goumindong wrote: »

    Sure seems like you're supporting a very specific solution

    I meant every word I said. You're the one who is apparently desperate to connect the dots in a manner requiring red yarn, thumbtacks, and a map.

    If you want to talk about the words I said, then I'm here for it. I'm not going to entertain your little fucking game about reading between the lines.

    jungleroomx on
  • monikermoniker Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    zagdrob wrote: »
    The FDA has the power to shut down manufacturing indefinitely? Hence this being an entire discussion.

    That's not no teeth. The problem is it got to this point because there aren't enough regulators for the intermediate steps.

    And because there isn't any redundancy in the system when shit goes wrong, because 4 companies control 90% of the market, and run them with zero margin.

    Which is where my point to needing to break them up into, say 8 companies with no more than 20% market share each, is meant to address the inevitability that something will go wrong at one facility between now and the heat death of the universe. More inspectors and more inspections will hopefully catch things quicker so resolutions can be made faster with less downtime so a catastrophe won't unfold, but remaining with a single point of failure for ~40% of formula sku's remains unacceptably fragile for the food supply of newborns. Even with a fully funded and staffed FDA, and fewer import restrictions. It'd be a pretty stupid idea if we were talking about peanut butter, and nobody is going to die if they have to go without a PBJ for a few months.

    But there are other, better ways, to deal with this. Which we have explained. They're better in that they do not increase prices in general operation, easier in that the mechanisms that control them are a more finely tunable lever, and faster in that we can implement them almost immediately.

    Are you going to tell me that you would not be making the same argument if a company that controlled 20% of the market had this kind of failure? Because i just can't see it. There is nothing in your argument that seems to not also apply if 20% of formula SKU failed. Or 10% of formula SKU failed.

    Because what actually happened was that 2.6%* of the global production had a problem. And our inability to import is what led to this being a significant disruption in supply.

    *An estimate, using numbers from here. I would like some more confirmed data but that is a lot more work than i am willing to do.

    Yes, because a company with 20% market share would not be capable of creating this large of a shock and catastrophe. Their issues would also be easily resolved with increased inspections alone while the other facilities just have to add on a few shifts to keep stores stocked and newborns fed. When a problem grows large enough it shifts from being a difference in scale to a difference in kind.


    In a somewhat similar vein, after the Gateway Project is built I'll be much less concerned about our economy being thrown into Recession by a leaky tunnel because it will finally have redundancy after a century of disrepair.

  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »

    Sure seems like you're supporting a very specific solution

    Point out the words where I say it. As far as I can tell you're just making up other peoples arguments (ones you yourself are directly stating as what's actually their position) and then throwing it back at them as to what they really mean, because they aren't making the specific argument you want them to make.

    I meant every word I said. You're the one who is apparently desperate to connect the dots in a manner requiring red yarn, thumbtacks, and a map.

    If you want to talk about the words I said, then I'm here for it. I'm not going to entertain your little fucking game about reading between the lines.

    I did... I quoted you directly... Its right there? What does it mean then when you negate the idea that we cannot throw people in prison in order to solve the problem and say that we indeed can lay the blame on those people?

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  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »

    Sure seems like you're supporting a very specific solution

    Point out the words where I say it. As far as I can tell you're just making up other peoples arguments (ones you yourself are directly stating as what's actually their position) and then throwing it back at them as to what they really mean, because they aren't making the specific argument you want them to make.

    I meant every word I said. You're the one who is apparently desperate to connect the dots in a manner requiring red yarn, thumbtacks, and a map.

    If you want to talk about the words I said, then I'm here for it. I'm not going to entertain your little fucking game about reading between the lines.

    I did... I quoted you directly... Its right there? What does it mean then when you negate the idea that we cannot throw people in prison in order to solve the problem and say that we indeed can lay the blame on those people?

    No I’m fairly certain we can blame the vast majority of the systemic societal ills on the whims of rich people wanting more money.

    I bolded it so you can point out exactly where the fuck I mention "throw people in prison."

  • MillMill Registered User regular
    The baby formula plants really highlight a huge problem with pure capitalism. From a purely capitalistic stance, reducing production down to as few plants as possible is good because you are reducing costs to run things. For society though, it's fucking terrible as we are seeing now. It means, that there is a higher chance of shit being disrupted because the supply chain is no longer as robust. If you have three plants, each controlling a third of the supply for something key, one going down means you're out a third of your supply and that can get really bad if it's something with a fairly short shelf life and it's super easy to avoid producing excess. Also where that plant reduction is really saving on long term costs is maintenance, which means less jobs for maintenance people do and personnel needed to run the plants. No given that nothing runs in a vacuum, the people that own the plants are usually opposed to social welfare programs and their plant consolidation means you have less jobs and are forcing me people to possibly be dependent on social welfare because there might not be enough jobs.

    This is why it's really important that we have a congress that cares about the welfare of society over that of corporations. Often what might be considered most profitable for corporations is a pretty shitty deal for society as a hole because the owner class wants to hoard wealth and punish those that are poor. Such dynamics are pretty fucking unsustainable because you do eventually get revolts.

    Would also be nice if Congress took another look at how corporate setups work. One they pull in way too much wealth that they then use to weaken stuff put in place to prevent them from causing problems. SCOTUS also needs to be told to fuck off on corporations being people and really told to eat shit on the idea of money being speech, it isn't speech and the parasite class needs to fuck off there. We also need to make it harder for people to use corporate setups as a go to get out jail card. There are a shit ton of situations where the people in charge of corporations do something really shitty and then get to walk because it's the corporation at fault and not them and these are situations where the response should be "Yes, you do it as a business decisions but you had to make a conscious decision to do X, so fuck you, go to jail and do not pass go! You should have realized it was a shitty thing to do, that violated the law." On top of that, we do need to make the consequences for corporations higher because some of the fuckery we do see, is a result of "that fine is chump change and we'll make a killing if we can get away flaunting the rules for X amount of time." We need more stuff that is along the lines of ADA's in terms of having teeth, a ton of wealthy shithead entities hate it because if you get caught violating it, you'll get fucked up and that has actually discouraged a certain level of fuckery because it's never profitable to be in violation of ADA if you get caught. A setup of fines, should be one where companies fear being caught out of compliance because the consequences will ensure any profits they have made aren't just erased, but that they'll eat a real financial loss.

  • lonelyahavalonelyahava Call me Ahava ~~She/Her~~ Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    So what I'm getting is that

    •Congress should allocate more money to beef up the FDA and hire more inspectors so that a mass shut down isn't necessary.

    •Congress should also create new regulations with some harsher penalties for endangering infants through supply chain disruption due to negligence.

    •Congress should also break up the infant formula Trust market by breaking apart the conglomerates and forcing smaller companies into production around the country for a more centralised infrastructure that's less prone to failure in one plant being catastrophic.

    •Congress should also find a way to remove/revise tariffs that will allow for international importation of infant formula, although this week also need to be coupled with the higher funding for the FDA to ensure foreign goods meet US standards.

    And most of us agree that at least some of these, if not a combination of all of them, child help both alleviate the issue now, but could possibly help in the future at preventing a relapse?

    Is this essentially what you're all circling each other with?

  • HamHamJHamHamJ Registered User regular
    So what I'm getting is that

    •Congress should allocate more money to beef up the FDA and hire more inspectors so that a mass shut down isn't necessary.

    •Congress should also create new regulations with some harsher penalties for endangering infants through supply chain disruption due to negligence.

    •Congress should also break up the infant formula Trust market by breaking apart the conglomerates and forcing smaller companies into production around the country for a more centralised infrastructure that's less prone to failure in one plant being catastrophic.

    •Congress should also find a way to remove/revise tariffs that will allow for international importation of infant formula, although this week also need to be coupled with the higher funding for the FDA to ensure foreign goods meet US standards.

    And most of us agree that at least some of these, if not a combination of all of them, child help both alleviate the issue now, but could possibly help in the future at preventing a relapse?

    Is this essentially what you're all circling each other with?

    Basically all the disagreement is about point 3.

    While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    A fine is just a price.

    No, really - part of a company's risk assessment and budget balancing is figuring out how much money to set aside to pay fines, because it's more profitable for them to just pay the fines than follow the goddamn law.

  • zagdrobzagdrob Registered User regular
    DarkPrimus wrote: »
    A fine is just a price.

    No, really - part of a company's risk assessment and budget balancing is figuring out how much money to set aside to pay fines, because it's more profitable for them to just pay the fines than follow the goddamn law.

    Yes that's why regulatory agencies need to be able to prices fines at 'infinite, fuck you, you are now out of business'.

    Which the FDA can do (and has done) in some circumstances. The big problem is there is the middle area between 'priced in lol 5 minutes of profit' slap on the wrist fines and 'nuke them from orbit' is a space that lacks the regulatory resources and power / will. It needs to be backstopped and takes time and money and people on the ground auditing books.

  • monikermoniker Registered User regular
    zagdrob wrote: »
    DarkPrimus wrote: »
    A fine is just a price.

    No, really - part of a company's risk assessment and budget balancing is figuring out how much money to set aside to pay fines, because it's more profitable for them to just pay the fines than follow the goddamn law.

    Yes that's why regulatory agencies need to be able to prices fines at 'infinite, fuck you, you are now out of business'.

    Which the FDA can do (and has done) in some circumstances. The big problem is there is the middle area between 'priced in lol 5 minutes of profit' slap on the wrist fines and 'nuke them from orbit' is a space that lacks the regulatory resources and power / will. It needs to be backstopped and takes time and money and people on the ground auditing books.

    The SEC is empowered to impose a lifetime ban from association with a publicly traded company if you commit enough fraud. (Though they rarely do so) New York recently barred the Trump's from being involved in nonprofits. If the FDA/ SEC/ DOJ imposed a lifetime ban from managerial, oversight, or roles of public trust on Executives I would not shed a tear. I would also suspect that their replacements would be more attentive to quality control issues.

  • ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    zagdrob wrote: »
    DarkPrimus wrote: »
    A fine is just a price.

    No, really - part of a company's risk assessment and budget balancing is figuring out how much money to set aside to pay fines, because it's more profitable for them to just pay the fines than follow the goddamn law.

    Yes that's why regulatory agencies need to be able to prices fines at 'infinite, fuck you, you are now out of business'.

    Which the FDA can do (and has done) in some circumstances. The big problem is there is the middle area between 'priced in lol 5 minutes of profit' slap on the wrist fines and 'nuke them from orbit' is a space that lacks the regulatory resources and power / will. It needs to be backstopped and takes time and money and people on the ground auditing books.

    "Fines of such-and-such percent of gross revenue" is an option, especially if you're looking for penalties that hurt consistently intead of being either a service charge for companies at one end of the spectrum or completely annihilatory at the other.

  • Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Registered User regular
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    So what I'm getting is that

    •Congress should allocate more money to beef up the FDA and hire more inspectors so that a mass shut down isn't necessary.

    •Congress should also create new regulations with some harsher penalties for endangering infants through supply chain disruption due to negligence.

    •Congress should also break up the infant formula Trust market by breaking apart the conglomerates and forcing smaller companies into production around the country for a more centralised infrastructure that's less prone to failure in one plant being catastrophic.

    •Congress should also find a way to remove/revise tariffs that will allow for international importation of infant formula, although this week also need to be coupled with the higher funding for the FDA to ensure foreign goods meet US standards.

    And most of us agree that at least some of these, if not a combination of all of them, child help both alleviate the issue now, but could possibly help in the future at preventing a relapse?

    Is this essentially what you're all circling each other with?

    Basically all the disagreement is about point 3.

    I support 3 irrespective of the impact (or not) on the situation at hand

    Abbott just keeps coming up in too many places and ways lately

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