Reddit reviews The Jungle (Dover Thrift Editions)

Read this, friend.

If you are actually curious about this sort of thing I would recommend reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. It talks about horrible working conditions and disgusting standards set by meat packing industries leading to government intervention. Upton wrote a few muckraking socialist novels.
https://www.amazon.com/Jungle-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486419231

In 1906 Sinclair wrote The Jungle. We've made some progress since then, but have a long way to go.
Factory farms simultaneously harm animals and exploit their poor, often illegal workforce. Human and animal rights are sometimes intertwined.

I agree with some of the points you've made. However, I think you're forgetting that businesses exist SOLELY to create profit for themselves and their shareholders. Everything else is, at best, secondary. This includes safety standards, equal opportunity laws, non-discrimination policies, public relations, child labor laws, ensuring a 2 day weekend, hours workable per week, overtime policies, etc. You say that people and watch dog groups can prevent these things from happening but many of the Federal Departments that currently regulate these things were originally created from public outrage. If the people alone had the power to enforce these things on their own why would there be a need for these institutions to be created in the first place? These departments responsible for regulating specific industries are an extension of our Constitutional Republic government. Considering the fact that most people have basic necessities they need to cover like putting food on the table, house payments, children, car payments, utilities, etc. Most people can't afford the luxury of protesting for any prolonged period of time. This is why these institutions exist, people vote others into positions where it is their job to worry about these things so the public can go back to being productive members of society. These departments that regulate are by definition an example of our Republic-based government working how it should. If citizens had to spend every waking moment trying to fend off everything bad that companies were trying to do in a regulation-less world people would give up after a while. Eventually you have to go home, go back to work, and go back to your regular life.

Just for the sake of argument let's run a hypothetical on what would happen if some current regulations ceased to exist.

1. Your food would no longer be regulated by the FDA. This means no more mandatory quality inspections on food and liquid drink products. Why would a corporation spend more money hiring quality assurance inspectors or setting up departments and policy guidelines for food inspection for their food if there is no enforcement or incentive to do so? Logically, they could just cut the price of the food since they saved money on not having to regulate their products and position it as a benefit to the customer because you save money on the food. If public outcry gets bad enough about the quality of the food, companies could simply make their own internal Quality Assurance departments and then heavily mark up the price on the inspected food to compensate. Since there's no regulation their definition of "quality inspected" food could mean anything. They don't have to disclose the foods contents on labels anymore without regulation. I mean a company could use unsafe coloring techniques or pump their food with unregulated chemicals in unrestricted amounts for the sake of making their food look more presentable. How much of what is in your food is no longer known. Deathly allergic to specific types of food? Sorry you have to pay a mark up price for that since it costs us money to make alternative products that don't have those specific things in them. You could very realistically end up with ground up bugs in your food and drinks since pesticides are expensive and it would be more profitable not to spend the money on something you're not required to do. Ever accidentally gotten shower water in your mouth? Or used the bathroom faucet to wash your face or swish your mouth out after brushing your teeth? Your local water company might be cutting corners too on water filters and other internal processes since utilities can now be competitive without regulation.
   
   
2. Media content would be an entirely different landscape without regulation. No more FCC to monitor programming. Shows can now run themes and topics of any kind. Anything ranging from blatant nudity to child pornography broadcasts. Anyone with basic equipment and the ability to broadcast can now essentially make a show about anything they want. And even if companies had to maintain a public image and regulated their own broadcasting, ad space would still be an issue. Even if we give some broadcasting corporations the benefit of the doubt and we assume some of them self regulated their content you could, hypothetically, still have insanely inappropriate ad's pop up on your TV because they bought the ad space and they can advertise whatever they want to without regulation. Broadcasting companies would still exist to make profit and so any company with the right amount of money can get the ad space they need, regardless of their advertised content. The most interesting thing about deregulation in the media sector is that Japan is a pretty good example of what lax broadcasting regulation looks like.
   
   
3. All types of transportation would change dramatically. No more seat belts, hazard lights, turn signals, bumpers, airbags, etc. The car manufacturing companies would not be required to include them. They would be "Luxury" features. Cheaper cars would be put for sale with bare-bones features with the attraction of being better bang for your buck. You save money on buying a cheaper car but you sacrifice things in return. If public outcry gets bad enough, just re-add those features but use the cheapest materials possible to save money. Now you have issues where airbags didn't deploy in crashes, brakes failures, seat belts didn't hold and tore right through on impact, etc. Unless of course you have the money for that fancy car with them fancy top of the line turny blinky majiggers then you're not in such a bad position. Also no more traffic regulation would be required. Certain cities and municipalities could create their own standards for driving because cities, like businesses, also have budgets they need to maintain. So to save a few bucks City A chooses to make their entire city use stop signs for all of their roads (except highway and freeways) instead of expensive lights that require installation, maintenance, and electricity to maintain. City B however chooses to install round-a-bout systems all throughout their city as a cheap solution to traffic regulation since the city has a pretty good connection to local cementing companies. You would get tons and tons of individual cities doing these things in unique ways beneficial to each city but at the end of the day it would all only add more confusion for anyone that has to do out of city or out of state travel. Accidents as well as fatalities would likely go up as well. Without regulation people would also be free to not buy car insurance if they didn't want to. Truck divers and other driving intensive positions would no longer be required to have specific licences. Also emergency response times go up since there is no more traffic regulation forcing people to move over to the side of the road or Traffic signal preemption that helps reduce response times for Emergency Responders. Lack of regulation also would not only apply to cars but also to trains, planes, boats, etc. No more life jacket requirements, drinking and driving boats is fine, no more mandatory maintenance on personally owned single engine planes, air space regulation, etc.
   
   
4. Employers no longer have regulations either. Work weeks can be whatever your bosses make them to be. You could work 10, 12, or 16 hour shifts and if you don't like it you get the boot and there goes your car payments, mortgage payments, etc. Work weeks no longer have to be 40 hours either. Also no more overtime. No more company sponsored insurance since it costs the company quite a lot to maintain their insurance policies. Child labor laws no longer exist. Rambunctious young children wanting to make some money no longer have to do basic jobs like walking dogs, lemonade stands, etc. Companies can hire kids to push mail carts around or other basic clerical duties or even physical labor. No more sick time, vacation time, holiday pay, etc.
   
   
5. No more FDA means no more drug regulation. Walgreen's now sells EVERYTHING over the counter. Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, Morphine, Adderall, Xanax, etc. Prescriptions are no longer required to buy the medication you want. This works out in Pharmaceutical companies favor since they can make way more money opening up their entire repertoire of drugs instead of only a select few OTC medications. Also the contents of what is in those drugs, recommended dosage amounts, expiration dates, etc all that is gone. Just blank generic bottles with basic labels. Save money on not having to print all of that information on each individual product.
   
   Again, this is all hypothetical but regulations are actually extremely beneficial considering our current form of government. The idea that everything will just work itself out is naive. Are all regulations good? No. Do some regulations impede companies and peoples ability to innovate? Yes. But the trade offs of having these agencies far outweighs any possible benefit gained by de-regulating everything. I personally believe that deregulation is something that falls more in line with Anarchism than anything else considering the mentality behind it stems from the belief that government is inherently bad. Either way it gets into semantics at that point and I'd rather not go there.
   
   Some good sources on the matter:
   
   Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle"
   
   Susan E. Dudley's "Regulation: A Primer"
   
   Robert Baldwin's "Understanding Regulation"
   

Let's add The Jungle to 1984 as required reading for modern day America.

I think you need to read this.

Cons are still pissed off that we are not living in The Jungle.

I recently read the book The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair.

That book was written in 1906, and it illustrates this problem and solution so clearly, its life changing. I highly recommend that book.

I just want to say that the problem in this scenario boils down to power. Our society is structured in such a way where some people have power over others, this inevitably results in corruption and evil.

Perhaps you should read [The Jungle by Upton Sinclair] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Jungle-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486419231) or the more contemporary [Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser] (http://www.amazon.com/Fast-Food-Nation-Dark-All-American/dp/0547750331) for some insight in to the labor force that keeps this food system working. Unfortunately, I think most of us would ignore animal welfare and safety if it was what we had to do to feed and cloth our own families.

My comment contains info about pads NOT being given for free in India, but at a price most consumers could afford and would pay. Capitalism. It rocks.

As to the illegality of feeding people without utilizing properly certified and sanitary facilities, yeah, that has some history behind it than makes it sensible overall, despite hurting people's feeeeeeeelings along the way.