On 6/7/05, Stewart Stremler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > begin quoting Todd Walton as of Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 07:35:07AM -0700: > > So overlooking violations of the standard would not mean more money, > > when it is claimed that the overlooking is for the purpose of gaining > > more money. > > What standard? I thought you were presuming a situation where there > was no standard to refer to, and the loss of revenue was with regards > to the business in question.
We're assuming here that revenue between the business in question (the Zoo) and the government (City/County of San Diego) tracks each other. What's good for the business is good for the government. The claim is that the health inspector, or the system in which the health inspector works, is willing to turn a blind eye to some degree of standards-violation, because he/she/it doesn't want to do anything that will diminish the revenue of the business, and thus the government. I'm pointing out that this represents a contradiction. Let's say the "A" is so important that some people, upon seeing it, will choose not to buy food there. They may want to avoid the disgust of finding a bone part in their beef or they may fear salmonella poisoning or some other unpleasantness. So, if the possibility of those things exist, someone is going to end up with a bone in their beef, or salmonella, and they're going to be pissed off and decide not to come back, or at least not buy food, and they're going to tell their friends and perhaps the media. The Reader would *love* that kind of story. And thus the Zoo will lose money. In this scenario the government would have maximized revenue by forcing the business to earn their "A". But what if the "A" is *not* so important that people won't avoid buying food just because the place has a "B"? Or, alternatively, what if not getting an "A" doesn't mean anything in practical terms? "B" standards don't mean the possibility of any sort of unpleasantness. Then what's the point of having the standard in the first place, if no one benefits from it? Logically, one or the other is true. Either the standard really matters, or it really doesn't. Since the existence of the standard is an implicit statement that there *is* a benefit, then, logically, the government will be losing money by not enforcing it. What remains is to juggle the risks. -todd -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
