Today it's widely known that large doses of solanine (a compound in potatoes and tomatoes) are toxic, but the amount commonly in food is thought to be safe. So we haven't banned potatoes.
But even if some insane or evil scientist invents a harmful compound that becomes widely used, I'd be mainly angry at the US Public Health Services, or the equivalent public health agency in other countries. It's their responsibility to only allow safe products. They conducted a study on leaded gasoline and decided not to ban it. And every other country allowed it as well.
So we have to conclude every country's public health agency was either corrupt or incompetent, or that the harm from leaded gasoline at the dosage used wasn't obvious at the time. (Or both.)
Humans have eat potatoes for about 8000 years. So that seems to be a pretty large scale experiment.
While deciding to put a safe amount of a dangerous material on a product used in large scale is not a good decision.
Not sure how to explain (as I have little time now) but here is a simple way: - both potatoes and led have safe and dangerous levels - one - potato - was used since at least 8000 years ago - the other was not used on such large scale
It seems to me that we need to define safe levels in other way:
- safe levels on small scale and uses rarely
- safe levels on large scale or used constantly
With leaded gas, the problem was also these small, long term effects that had never been established despite lead being used for thousands of years.
Small amounts of lead don't kill you immediately, they just make you a little dumber, a little more aggressive...
the harm from leaded gasoline at the dosage used wasn't obvious at the time
He was famously warned of leaded gasoline's dangers, had to take a vacation to Miami to recover from lead poisoning. And also was famously a co-inventor of CFCs.
His only saving grace is that his name is also on the list of "inventors killed by their own inventions."
Aside from typical drivel, what evidence do you have of lowered quality of life compared to other modes of economic structure? Of all the economic systems in the world, capitalist societies have had life expectancy (from birth, age 10, age 20, etc.) trend upwards. Famously, the Soviet Union dropped life expectancy in a time of peace, as did East Germany.
The US of A is known for its individualism in stark contrast to many other societies, so you're going to have to prove a lot with this statement:
> the profit motive distorts and chews up any moral precepts of any individual
If citizens have little or no influence on their government it might be better not to horrify them with... shall we say... reality(?) If all we have is poisonous water for you then you can just drink it without knowing what is in it.
If we are going to do some kind of democracy we need you to have access and/or exposure to the full horror of the situation.
The market machinery needs a good definition of profit. If it must all be measured in one unit we can do that, money, gold, sea shells or quality of life, it doesn't really matter to the game.
We ironically build the proverbial hospital then go look for ways to profit from it. It follows that treatment must be as expensive as possible in order to maximize profit. You could consider the hospital the profit.
If we are going to modify your reality for you then your opinion is anything money can buy and we wont have the advantages of totalitarianism either.
There would be no difference between building or bombing hospitals. It would just be a matter of which is more profitable.
Other models of economic structure is a fun topic but we are not in a position to do it. We might want to rewrite it in Rust but the best we can hope for is some small modifications, close some of the worse bugs. It is hard to let the imagination run wild if it's not going to happen.
We could literally nuke the entire planet and 30 years later have a generation for which cancer, long winters and ruined before time cities are normal. The species sucks at perceiving reality