Do you agree that the effectiveness of OSHA is at least questionable, based on this evidence?

This right here is why we seldom get along in these discussions. Your methodology is flawed.

The argument, the debate, the discovery, the process, the whatever-you-want-to-call-it, does not start with "I have selected THIS evidence for discussion. We shall have this debate on these terms." It starts with "here's the subject of debate. Bring all the evidence you can defend."

Arguing the suitability of government oversight based on a four-page flyer printed by a bush-league think-tank wholly funded by the Koch brothers (that is utterly and totally without citation, by the way) is argument by invective, not rhetoric. I chose to dismantle you based on what I know of OSHA because it effectively annihilated any standing you may have had from a factual basis but I could just as easily have dismantled you for this. You're using a poisoned source based on zero empirical data and extrapolating it out to such a broad and useless extreme that the only logical explanation is you're attempting argument by slight-of-hand.

And you can fool some people. But if your goal is to actually broaden the understanding of the situation by all sides, your efforts are disingenuous.

You're a smart guy. You're much more polite than I am. But your style of rhetoric is maddeningly dishonest. I mean, look at this shit:

Yet we give businesses the money that contributes their profits every time we interact with them. Why do we keep giving them money, if we don't care about their profits?

Because our concrete need for their goods and services outweighs our abstract need for ethics and morality, ASSUMING we know what Nestle does to health in sub-Saharan Africa, for example. Your whole argument hinges on consumers having perfect understanding of the inputs, outputs and externalities of manufacture and marketing and I've met people who didn't know olive oil comes from olives. Compare and contrast - Danon is allowed to pretend they invented a new kind of bacteria, put Jamie Lee Curtis in white and suddenly Activia is the hot new thing and war on breastfeeding? what's that?

I mean, this is basic Maszlow's Hierarchy shit and I say that fully aware of how discredited Maszlow is because holy shit, son, "I need eggs" is going to be a lot more compelling than "I abhor animal cruelty" even if the cage-free organic ones aren't four times as expensive. Thus, we rely on our government to make sure that the shit we don't think about isn't produced in an unthinkable way.

Blows your scope the fuck up - and that's just the point. You like to argue gerrymandered little corners of the world and hope that nobody will consider the greater consequences. Which is fine when we're discussing narrow things... but we're not. We're discussing "is government necessary" and that's a wall you gotta build brick by brick, not by saying "look at this brick, imagine the wall."

I honestly don't know where your libertarian philosophies come from. I do know that your arguments have lots of focus and very little perspective. I've been deposed. I've been trained for deposition. I've taken training in medical liability and I've picked a lot of fights on the Internet. What you're doing - what you're trying to do - is win by default, by discrediting the source. Lawyers used to do that to me as an acoustician - they don't understand the first fucking thing about field impact isolation class but if they can convince the jury I'm an idiot because my report has a dangling participle phrase in it, they don't have to.

But your goal isn't to sway the jury despite the evidence. Is it? It's to convince others of the truth of your statements. I mean,

The business interest in the public good is merely instrumental toward making more profit, but it is to some extent effective. Hurting a customer can lead to expensive lawsuits. Bad service can affect ratings, reducing market share.

Right. If I get food poisoning from the Mexican restaurant down the street, I can (A) sue or (B) report them to the health department. Which solution do you think is out of reach to 99% of consumers?

If you are so cynical (as you should be) to doubt that a business cares about treating you well when the business stands to gain from every interaction, why are you not equally cynical about the motivation for a public safety inspector, who may gain nothing extra by doing the job properly, and in fact might be able to gain by letting someone cheat?

Dude. A health inspector that fails independent verification ceases to be a health inspector. A health inspector that gets caught taking bribes goes to jail. Meanwhile, he gets paid regardless of what he finds - unlike the restaurant, which has a concrete financial incentive to play as close to the edge as possible, the inspector has no motivation in play other than remuneration for doing his job.

You know this. You're aware of this. You use rationality in nearly every single one of your arguments, but whenever "the government" is involved, you tack towards "but public servants can be assumed to be shady."

I want to see the kinds of arguments you're capable of when you aren't hiding behind doublespeak, smoke and mirrors. Make an honest argument. I'll give you an honest answer. But browbeating other people with obsequious backhanded attacks on the obvious is intellectually lazy and rhetorically dishonest.

You're better than this.

It's gonna be a few days before I'm in front of my computer to give you my full thoughts, so bear with me cause mobile is just no good for these kinds of conversations. But to keep the conversation going, I will touch on this . . .

If you are so cynical (as you should be) to doubt that a business cares about treating you well when the business stands to gain from every interaction, why are you not equally cynical about the motivation for a public safety inspector, who may gain nothing extra by doing the job properly, and in fact might be able to gain by letting someone cheat?

Theoretically, it's probably something along the lines of risk vs. rewards or something. Companies have much, much more to gain by being deceitful and are more likely to do it if they think they can get away from it. A public official, ideally speaking, runs the risk of losing much more than he has to gain by doing a poor job, or even worse, accepting a bribe. He doesn't stand to make millions by looking the other way, but if looking the other way lands him in jail and burdened by fines, he'll probably think twice.

As for customers supporting bad businesses, you underestimate just how easy it is for businesses to take advantage of people. A lot of the time, the consumers are often ignorant on how they're at risk of being taken advantage of. Everything from payday loan companies and buy here pay here dealers (cars, furniture, electronics) to hack dentists and doctors to bad landlords make life difficult for people who don't know any better. Additionally, if a company is the only option available, say a gas company for example, consumers have no choice but to do business with them. Lastly, sometimes customers might not care about how a company is run, but that doesn't mean the company is worth supporting. There are businesses out their that are absolute hell for their employees that customers still patronize. Regulatory agencies like OSHA and The Department of Labor helps protect those workers.