a pair of quotes that are quite true...and funny!

Coding is a bit like sex. It's only satisfying when you do it for the joy of creating code, not if money's all that matters to you. - "Opportunist" on /.

and the reply:

Also, it's very easy to make a mistake which you don't discover until several months later, but which you end up having to support for the next two decades. - "cperciva"

On the question of Beef

Or specifically the question of why did the USDA argue against Creekstone's intentions to test their beef in court and why they seem to be defending the cattle industry's "right to profits" over  their role of protecting the consumer from harm...

Background: Creekstone wanted to enter the market of selling beef to the Japanese.  The Japanese required that they test everything, just as they do with their own, in order to do so.  Their standards are much higher than ours (like the British, they've had problems in the past), and have already banned almost all beef imports from America.  Creekstone wanted to oblige to enter that market (since profits in America are pretty static) and so designed a program where they would test everything to the Japanese standard.  The Cattle Industry (ie, the rest of the competition in America) complained that they could use that testing as a marketting ploy in America and competition would require that they all meet that same standard.  This they say they could not afford to do.  The surprise in all this was that the USDA sided with them (for increased government regulation to protected corporate profits) rather than with the attitude of free enterprise that says a company should be allowed to do anything ethical to remain competitive and secure an advantage.

So the question was, WHAT THE FUCK?  Why would the USDA be siding with corporate regulation against free enterprise in a manner that appeared to be against the consumer's best interests?

The answer?  Like all government safety regulations, especially, say, car safety, it's playing the odds.  How many would be hurt by it vs. how badly would the industry suffer to the point of non-existence.

As I wrote:Effect Measure:

what has the cattle industry got to fear?

Losing so much profit by having to change their testing procedures to compete with Creekstone that they end up going out of business and we ALL starve.

The problem with commodities today is that there's (almost) no profit in them except by reducing costs and going mass-production on a scale unprecedented. Even then, the costs of labor increase while the cost of beef is forced cheaper by customer demand and government regulation.

So for the companies that are on the edge of profitability, adding that test might eliminate what little profit they have. Result: chapter 7 or 11, and while the courts are cleaning up the mess, no beef is produced, more money is lost, and the cost of beef for the consumer goes up.

Thus, the USDA acting to protect customers by protecting the corporations. They act as if the loss of the corporation through economic competition is more detrimental to the industry as a whole and the American consumer than the extremely rare case of a diseased animal making it into the food supply.

Like any insurance (or assurance) system, it's playing the odds and statistics with people's lives. We normally don't notice it until it personally affects us.

Better that a handful of people get sick and die than the entire nation starve because the corporations that feed them go out of business with no replacement.

Or at least, that's their view. Treat society as a whole and it makes perfect sense. Treat society as a collection of individuals with equal rights to life and its utterly repulsive.

Now, the problem is that the Declaration of Independence demonstrates that the founders believed in the latter, and THAT's why the attitude of the USDA and the corporations, while "American" in terms of free enterprise, is Unamerican by the standards our founders had established.

Note I'm not saying it's illegal or unconstitutional, merely unethical by the standard the DoI established as a minimum.

Now the problem with this attitude of government/corporation protections is exactly what was demonstrated by Al Gore (An Inconvenient Truth) in emissions standards in automobiles.  While keeping design and manufacturing costs cheaper so that there's that little bit more profit, it cuts us off from export markets and restricts our market to merely the 300 million American citizens rather than the 6 billion people in the rest of the planet.  We've cut off our own noses and decided that a market 50 times the size of our own isn't worth the minor loss in profits in our own.  We've stopped taking risks. 

*Actually, there's another answer to that: our labor costs are too high so that there's no way would could compete on price alone and our higher quality standards alone wouldn't be enough of a selling point to markets with so little money.  We know this for a fact because it's exactly the argument made (and proven) when mass production with unskilled labor was introduced to other industries over hand-crafted works like furniture 100 years ago.

We used to be the "breadbasket of the world".  Now in spite of all of the wheat we grow, our pets are getting sick by possible Chinese grain that came into America to that plant that's right there in Kansas where all the fucking grain is being grown!!!

That's just insane, but that's what corporatism has done to us.

And NEITHER party is doing a damned thing about it.