<My favorite example is food inspection. Do you own a home botulism testing kit, Tom? No? I'd still feel it would be safe to have dinner at your house because you're buying food that's been inspected by the government. We the people have the government hire experts to do what we can't, or what wouldn't be economically efficient to do on an individual basis. It's benign, and beneficial, and a legitimate role for government.

It's a legitimate role for somebody, but there is nothing that says this has to be a government function.

The underlying assumption behind this premise is that the meat industry, unless restrained physically, would delight in selling a product that would kill its customers. Very profitable. I cannot understand this bizarre mindset on the part of the Left, unless of course it's exactly what they would do under the circumstances.

The second assumption, of course, is that when the government is involved, everything is suddenly all right because they are better and wiser than we are, and not susceptible to the baser instincts and aquisitiveness that make businessmen turn to crime at every possible opportunity.

If you come to my house to eat, you are not only assuming that the meat is government-inspected, but that I have the good sense to have kept it in the fridge, cooked it properly to the right temperature, didn't set the cooked meat on the dirty cutting board, and wasn't holding the kind of grudge against you that would lead me to spike it with Ex-Lax. In other words, your fellow citizen has a lot more to do with your welfare than the government does.

No, I don't have a home botulism testing set, but I assume as a matter of course that raw food is contaminated and treat it accordingly. I also know what to watch for in botulism contamination, and what is required to deal with it. Did I mention that I do the cooking in my house?

Without government inspection of meat packing plants, the key would be reliable information available to the consumer. I could go into the non-governmental alternatives for standards and codes that do, and historically have, worked, but it's a long process involving the difficult task of overcoming some serious preconceptions in the minds of people who have been trained since birth to believe that unless Uncle Sam does it, it can't be done. Training courtesy of Uncle Sam, of course.

In a free-market scenario, it is easy to visualize a clean meat packing plant advertising the fact and inviting third parties (non-governmental) to check them out. At some point this usually evolves into professional associations and standards that are agreed to by all. Once you realize that most people selling you a product are not your enemies, it gets easy.