An Access Advertising EconBrief:
Understanding Risk, Benefit and Safety
The mainstream press has propagated an informal historical narrative of safety in America. Prior to the Progressive era and the advent of muckraking journalism, the public lay at the mercy of rapacious businessmen who knowingly produced unsafe products and unwholesome foods in order to maximize their personal wealth. Thanks to the unselfish labors of investigating journalists and the subsequent creation of government regulatory agencies, products and foods became safe for the first time.
Now regulators and the press fight a never-ending battle for safety against the forces of greedy capitalism. Alas, there are so many industries and goods to regulate and so little time and money in the federal budget with which to do it.
In order to appreciate the full falsity of this doctrine, we must grasp the economic meaning of concepts like risk, benefit and safety. A good route…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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