Marotta, you really need to reread Rand. You were so wrong when you said this: Regulations are necessary to a functioning society. On the questions of the F.D.A., I submit that Ayn Rand would have approved of it, and, while she herself (and through Alan Greenspan) argued against financial regulation, she did not attack medical regulations specifically. In her lifetime, the Sulfanilamide Disaster of 1937 typified the need for the government to be pro-active, just as they would break up a ring intent on bank robbery before the criminals actually robbed their first bank.
Ayn Rand would never have approved of the F.D.A. Your reasoning is so flawed. She did not specifically attack regulations requiring those who want to braid hair having to get a state licence, therefore she would have approved of those regulations? Give me a break! She was quite specific in the principles involved. Individual rights can only be violated through the threat to initiate force, the initiation of force, theft or fraud. Therefore only those things can be the basis of moral laws that prohibit actions. Robbing a bank is usually an initiation of force, certainly a threat to use force, and clearly theft. When there is evidence that those acts are in the process of being carried out (which might include the planning phase, when done by an established bank robbery ring), the government has a moral right to act. Remember as well, that government has a moral right to act in defense of individual rights (stopping an initiation of force) and does not have to wait for the act of force to be completed. If appears that you have totally thrown aside the basic Objectivist principles regarding individual rights as the means of judging what is or is not proper for government and are simply talking about some fuzzy, pragmatically based, floating abstraction of "pro-active government" - which presumably will be carefully monitored and controlled by a knowledgable elite of properly licenced experts who will use "public safety" as their standard. But wait a minute... isn't that argument of the left.... of the progressives? You argue against a government that stands idle watching harms occur until it can act. (Your words) You really are a progressive who, strangely enough, think that you are an Objectivist and supporter of capitalism (or at least you once would have described yourself that way.)
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