Let the Market Protect Consumer Safety; J. Hood

His reasoningseemssound:make it more diffi cultfor childrento open aspirinbottlesand fewer childrenwillbe poisoned.The capsmaycostmore to manufacture than regular screw caps, but the drop in childpoisonings,he tellsyou,willbe worth the expense.So you passthe regulation.And child poisoningsslightlyincrease. Thisis not a hypotheticalcase.In 1970Congress passed the Poison Prevention PackagingAct to authorizeFederal regulationsthat would address the chUd poisoningissue,and two yearslater pro tective safety caps were required on aspirin bot tles. Since then, studies have shown that the requirement resulted in no significant drop in aspirin poisoningsamong children (the rate has come down,but not becauseof the rUle-poison ings have graduallyfallen since the 1950s).And the safety-caprule may well have causeda slight rise,againadjustingfor historicaltrendsin the rate of non-aspirinpoisonings.

How is thispossible?Kip Viscusiof Duke Uni versityattributesthe failureofthe safety-capstan dard to the "lullingeffect"of governmentaction: parents feel less need t~ take precautions about storing aspirin and other medicines away from their childrenbecausethe caps are "child-proof." John Hood is contributing editor of Reason magazine and political columnist for Spectator magazine in Raleigh, N.C. Viscusi also suggests a design problem. "Con sumers may leave the bottles open rather than grapplewithcapsthat theyfind difficultto open," he says, making the medicine more available to children. It would be unfair and unwise to fault all gov ernment regulationof product safety because of the safety-capdebacle-if it werean isolatedcase. But it is not. Since the creation of the Consumer Product SafetyCommissionin 1972, its sweeping mandateshave hurt consumers,impairedproduct development,and bungled the job of promoting safety.

During a brief period in the secondhalf of the ReaganAdministration,the CPSCwas less a nui sance, chiefly because of its deregulation minded chairman, Terry Scanlon. But since he -and Reagan-have passedthe reinsofpowerto others,the CPSCmay wellresumeits activistrole withbans,recalls,and mandatorystandards. The regulatoryburdenmightnot be as infuriat ing if consumer product safety had been vastly improvedby CPSCactions.But the evidencesug gests otherwise.In 1985 Viscusireviewedgeneral accidentstatisticsandspecificcasesofcommission regulationfor The Journalof Law and Economics and found "no evidenceof any significantbenefi cial impacts on product safety."Home-accident rates,whichhavebeenfallingsteadilysinceat least the 1930s,were affectedby changesin percapita consumptionand income,but not by changesin CPSCregulation. If CPSC regulations simplyfailed to pan out, thatwouldbe onething.Butin manycasesthereg ulations actually make consumers less safe by affecting product price and availability or by "jumping the gun" on research. In one well-publi cized case, the commission required children's pajamas to be treated with TRIS, a fire-retardant chemical. Later it was discovered that TRIS caused cancer in laboratory animals, so the com mission had actually mandated an increased risk of cancer.

In another case, the Commission took action against a product called Worm Gett'r, which uses electricity to flush earthworms to the surface of the ground, where they can be easily harvested for fish bait. After one injury involving the Worm Gett'r, the CPSC wanted to ban it, although 28people had been fatally electrocuted since 1971 using home made devices such as hot-wired golf clubs, which the Worm Gett'r is designed to replace. The Consumer Product Safety Commission fails so frequently not because of incapable staff, or contempt for consumers, or bureaucratic malfeasance. Consumer safety is simply not an area in which categorical government actions can 143 be successful. Every consumer is different-in taste, in wealth, in the willingness to take risks. These differences cannot be wished away or elim inated through regulation. And when the Com mission tries to do so, consumers and producers of the affected products react in unanticipated ways.

Most accidents are completely unpredictable. They depend on the mannerisms and behavior of a consumer, the time of day, the weather, and just blind luck. This information is not available to reg ulators in Washington, and cannot be reflected in CPSC directives. But it can be reflected in a free market. Regulators all too often view product-safety questions as static yes-or-no cases: if John Smith had not been holding an electric worm probe, he would not have been electrocuted by the probe. The real question is what John Smith would be holding and doing if the worm probe were unavail able. There are as many answers to that question as there are John Smiths. D IDEAS ON LIBERTY Freedomto Err I f the customer is left free to make his or her own selections, many of the selections made will be unwise, or even· stupid, when measured by the standards of different people who have different tastes or desires. The real question is whether or not a person of mature years should be free to make mistakes. Should he be free to select an unsafe automobile, or at least one without seat belts, if that is what he wants? If his vehicle is more likely to create a special hazard to others who are legitimately using the highway,that is one reason for denying him the privilege of being on the road. But suppose the only danger is a danger to the customer himself. Should he be compelled to protect himself from that danger even though he would prefer to assume the risk? The interventionist would answer, and has answered, that question in the affirmative.

The interventionist would tell all customers that they should not be permitted to pay a higher price for a product in order to get it into a package of a unique or colorful size or shape. The interventionist is opposed to letting the consumer examine the article and act on his own judgment. The consumer must not be allowed a freedom of choice. For if he is allowed such freedom, he might hurt himself. And to allow him to hurt himself, that is, to allow the doctrine of caveatemptorto operate, would be immoral. . . . Unwittingly, the interventionist is striving toward a rather drab society where the introduction of new products will be delayed or prevented, and the variety of articles being offered will tend to decline. -BERTEL M. SPARKS 144 Israel's Grassroots Libertarian Revolution by Sam Lehman-Wilzig T he Israeli government is freeing up the country's over-bureaucratizedand over regulated economy.However,this is no revolution from on high; rather, it is the Israeli publicthat has forcedthe government'shand.For thefirsttimein that nation'syounghistory,theciti zenry-rather than the leadership-is callingthe shots and setting the pace. The lessons to be learnedhave implicationsfar beyondIsrael'sbor ders.