"Nothing gets me going more than economic ignorance....Economic ignorance comes in different forms, and some types of economic ignorance are less excusable than others. But the most important implication of Rothbard’s point is that the worst sort of economic ignorance is ignorance about your economic ignorance. There are varying degrees of blameworthiness for not knowing certain things about economics, but what is always unacceptable is not to recognize that you may not know enough to be speaking with authority, nor to understand the limits of economic knowledge."
~Steven Horwitz
There is no such thing as an unregulated restaurant. When I go to a new town I don't check with the local government to see which restaurants I should go to, I check with Yelp, TripAdvisor and even Google, which provides reviews from thousands, if not millions of reviewers. I regulate the market constantly. I have certain places I frequent regularly, and others I avoid. If many people stop going to a certain establishment then this sends a signal to that establishment to change or stop doing business altogether.
Free, private market regulation is ongoing, it never stops. We are all regulatory officers. I trust reviews of millions of private market officers more than I trust a review from one government regulator than can be easily bought off.
But what if a new restaurant starts up and kills people before it can be reviewed? A new restaurant can have a private regulating agency, such as Underwriters Laboratories, Orthodox Union or even an insurance company come in and test and rate foods, and those new restaurants can then proudly post certification from these respected private agencies so that their new customers can see them.
Additionally, government regulation does not guarantee safe food anyways. We saw how Chipotle restaurants were plagued with closings in 2015 despite being regulated by the government, and anyone needing water for food or drinks in Flint Michigan or from the Animas River in Colorado were sorely disappointed in the Government's management of our water resources.
Interestingly, when I think of poison in alcohol, I am reminded that the United States government intentionally poisoned alcohol during prohibition in order to scare people away from drinking. This heinous step led to, by some estimates, up to 10,000 deaths. It should also lead to a healthy distrust of our political overlords.
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