Consumer Product Safety "Improvement"

[unixronin]

Walter Olson for Forbes, on the CPSIA and its "unintended" consequences.  Consider how fervently the large companies (Hasbro, target, others) and the "consumer advocate" organizations supported CPSIA, and draw your own conclusions as to how "unintended" some of these are.

Hailed almost universally on its passage last year — it passed the Senate 89 to three and the House by 424 to one, with Ron Paul the lone dissenter — CPSIA is now shaping up as a calamity for businesses and an epic failure of regulation, threatening to wipe out tens of thousands of small makers of children's items from coast to coast, and taking a particular toll on the handcrafted and creative, the small-production-run and sideline at-home business, not to mention struggling retailers.

If I were a nasty, suspicious person, I might suggest that large manufacturers and retailers have finally found a way to legally force small "artisan" producers and used-goods thrift stores out of business.

[Makers] must put a sample item from each lot of goods through testing after complete assembly, and the testing must be applied to each component.  For a given hand-knitted sweater, for example, one might have to pay not just, say, $150 for the first test, but added-on charges for each component beyond the first: a button or snap, yarn of a second color, a care label, maybe a ribbon or stitching — with each color of stitching thread having to be tested separately.

Suddenly the bill is more like $1,000 — and that's just to test the one style and size.  The same sweater in a larger size, or with a different button or clasp, would need a new round of tests — not just on the button or clasp, but on the whole garment.  The maker of a kids' telescope (with no suspected problems) was quoted a $24,000 testing estimate, on a product with only $32,000 in annual sales.

Under the CPSIA's provisions, thrift stores would not technically be required to have every donation that comes in tested.  But they would be liable if they sold an item later determined to be in violation.  So what are they to do?  They can't afford to have everything tested, and they potentially don't dare risk NOT having everything tested.

Comments

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

I am of the opinion that laws that are unenforced are more dangerous to a civil society than bad laws on the books. The way it engenders disrespect for all law is a significant problem.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Especially when combined with selective law enforcement for revenue generation, and abuses of authority such as this one (http://www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-Liberties-Examiner~y2009m2d5-Police-raid-victim-convicted-for-act-of-self-defense) - in which a citizen who shoots and kills someone breaking into his home in the middle of the night, who turns out to be a police detective taking part in an unannounced no-knock raid based on information from a burglar who burgles houses for the local police department so that they can de facto conduct warrantless searches, gets ten years in prison, while a police officer who shoots and kills an innocent citizen during a mistaken raid on the wrong house gets three weeks' administrative suspension with pay and his colleagues complain it's excessively harsh.

When the law acts in contemptible ways, citizens will hold the law in contempt.