http://benmalisow.com/blog.php?s=entry-the-forty-first-a-private-matter
" I hear a lot of arguments about how some things just could not be privatized, because no comparable company would step into the niche left by an absent government entity and provide that same service with a similar level of quality and function.
I was thinking about that position the other day while considering the FDA-- that is, the United States Food and Drug Administration. This entity, supposedly, keeps our national stockpile of canned baked beans relatively free of human thumbs, and assures us that our boner medicine is made from actual chemicals, and not just the powdered bones of rare animals.
How would privatizing such an organization work? What would it look like? Could it possibly be as effective? Who would perform this service?
As with most such things, I am a hopeless optimist, all based on my desperate love of science fiction, which drives my boundless faith in technology. For instance, I could picture a world without an FDA, and that vacuum filled by subscription services...you, the consumer, sign up for a private food-inspection service...maybe you buy an app for your smart phone...or pay an annual or monthly fee...and when you’re at the supermarket, you can use your Web-enabled phone to look up the groceries you’re considering before you purchase them. The service would tell you whether the products are safe for consumption by your family, or if they’re chock full of hog anus. "
[...]
"Except we already have this. For almost all the food you buy.
Who guessed it before they got here? It only occurred to me the other day, and I’ve been thinking about stuff like this for years.
The Jews have been doing it for millenia. More specifically, American Jews have been doing it with the domestic (and sometimes international!) food industry in almost exactly the manner I describe for the past 100 years.
Check your food labels. If you see a single U or K or P somewhere on the package, whether those letters are circled or not, that food has been inspected by a rabbinic organization, which has determined whether the food meets the strict quality criteria so as to meet the rules of kashrut....kosher.
The government has nothing to do with this process...other than protecting the copyright/trademark provisions those private entities hold on their specifics letters/codes. (Yep, I’m a believer in private property protected by the state, even intellectual property-- told you I wasn’t an anarchist.) The private entities have their own subscribers, adhere to their own standards, perform their own audits, make their own deals with the food companies, all without ANY legislative enforcement."