We All Scream (and We Should at This)

A Massachusetts town has shut down a 12 year old boy's home made ice cream business, one where the lad was giving half the proceeds to charity I will point out, citing food handling concerns. What utter nonsense. Here's the story.

This is, as is so often the case, government regulatory powers run amok. Stories such as this make my blood boil. It doesn't even matter, as a moral point, whether it's a 12 year old or an adult. If someone wants to make homemade ice cream and sell it simply to make a few bucks for themselves then dammit, they have the right to do so. It isn't anyone else's, much less the government's, business. If you're afraid you'll get sick then don't buy the stupid ice cream. Who the hell are you, government or anyone else (and government is 'anyone else' being a bully), to tell someone they can't do such a thing?

I remember buying bread from a home based baker in the Upper Peninsula who was forced to put an emphatic sticker on his wares, warning that his bread was baked in a kitchen not regulated by the Michigan Department of Agriculture. Oh the humanity. This guy baked bread of his own free will and I bought a loaf (and some cookies) on mine. So piss off, Ag boys. It's nothing to you.

These are prime examples of why I am growing increasingly libertarian as I get older. One of their standards is that if you can do something for free, you can do it for pay. This can't be applied to all things at all times I'll admit, but it's a good general principle. The Hessel baker could give his bread and cookies away quite morally and have no issue with the government. He can therefore sell them for profit without a government stamp of any kind. Just like the preteen in Massachusetts with his ice cream. He can give it away (which he did end up doing, although with requests for good will donations) but he can't sell it? Inane. No, worse: bizarre.

Government is too big and too much a part of our lives. Time to tell it to, to, just go away.

The little bakery

While at a farmers market up north recently I came upon a vendor of baked goods. He had chocolate chip cranberry cookies which were delightful, and carrot cake scones which were out of this world. I guarantee you I will seek out this baker the next time I'm in Hessel. Such small businesses merit our support.

Still, something unrelated to his wares caught my attention. It was the stickers which he apparently was forced to add onto each of his baked goods packages. The stickers warned me with an underlined emphasis, 'This product was produced in a kitchen unregulated by the Michigan Department of Agriculture'.

My first thought was, good. We need more of that. We need the government farther out of our lives. 

Do you know that it never once occurred to me that I might have been in danger from this guy's baked goods? Why should I even have presumed such evil? A small business especially in a small community where it needs to treat people well or simply not survive has, inherently, my best interests at heart. Note: I did not die, nor was I harmed in any way by the cookies or scones. 

I have however and on several occasions in my life been seriously ill from eating tainted foods which had indeed been and undoubtedly quite thoroughly inspected by my government. Department of Agriculture oversight did not save me from calamity then.

I say, more power to this little baker in Hessel working out of his own kitchen, and less to the bureaucrats who have no real hand in the actual satisfaction of consumer wants and needs. More power to the people who actually want to address consumer demand and less authority to the folks paid to look for wrongs to be righted. Such paragons of virtue will always find evil. Their jobs rely on it.

California Knows Everything

As if it isn't bad enough that the Federal Government has its hands in too many pies, now we have situations where one the states has taken it upon itself to get involved in enlightening the citizenry through badgering people about what it thinks important. It should be no surprise that that State is California.

While installing an in line ground fault interrupter on a piece of machinery, I found this warning wrapped around the cord:

WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, and other reproductive harm. Wash hands after handling.

On what grounds do they force this warning? California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment guideline states thus: “A person exposed to the chemical at the ‘no significant risk level’ for 70 years would not have more than a ‘one in 100,000’ chance of developing cancer as a result of that exposure.” Anything over that, say one extra case per 100,000 people over 70 years, means the tag has to be applied to the whatever it is at hand.

Doesn't this strike anyone as overkill? How am I supposed to feel about getting a scare that I have increased my chance of contracting cancer simply by putting a power cord on a machine? How do the people using equipment day after day react to the news that they are in such a slightly more hazardous situation than they could possibly have imagined? By what right does California think it can violate someone's comfort zone by insisting on a tag where no significant increase of contracting cancer exists?

We could dismiss it as simply the big dog of the nation throwing its weight around. But it's more than that: it serves as a reminder that government, any government, when its gets big enough feels it has the right to throw its weight around. California is darn near a nation unto itself anyway, and seeing as its infrastructure needs are well below what its citizens demand, one would think it would be more concerned with shoring up its physical plant than in promoting scare stories.

But, after all, its still a big brother government. What's not to love?