Anarcho-capitalism

The Freaky Blonde was very excited a few months back when 7-Up announced they were bringing out an all-natural version of their famous lemon-lime soda. She’s a big pro-organic pro-natural eater. Since I’m a pro-Atkins carnivore, we often have to really pre-think our grocery list so it fits into both of our menus. She’ll eat meat, and I’ll eat fiber, so we can usually find common ground. I rarely drink soda, but when I do, I usually drink diet (as I am anti-sugar completely). Most “sugared” sodas are even worse because they’re mostly HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup) and I’m a big believer that corn is one of the worst allergens humans ever consumed.

So 7-Up releases their “All Natural” soda, and TFB has her mother find a good deal on it. Her mom is the consumate deal-finder — being retired she has all the time in the world to find the coupons and sales. Never ask for a Whopper from her, she’ll whip out the burger envelope and skip through 50 coupons to find the best deal. I should hire her full time. She goes to the grocery store with the best soda price that day, and finds she has a coupon to try the new all natural 7-Up soda for free! Bonus!

Then the dreaded ring tone rings through the house. I call it dreaded because it is usually a complaint by the heavily right-wing mother about immigration or Iraq or the DaVinci code. Ugh. This time, though, it is the free market doing the best thing it does: finding bad products and distributing that information through billions of consumer interactions. The bad news?

The “All-Natural” 7-Up is far from all natural. It contains High Fructose Corn Syrup. Ouch.

Yet it is not a big deal. 7-Up spends millions upon millions on their “Cans on the trees and in the ground” commercials, and they’re for naught. Consumers who care about the all-natural diet realize immediately that there is nothing natural about HFCS, so the bloggers blog, the buyers stop buying, and the consumer quickly trumps the “big bad corporation” by doing what is natural when they find a product that is an out-right lie: they don’t buy it. They just stop. 7-Up gets hit with a big red number on their accounting ledger, and eventually things will get back to normal and someone else will try the same game but maybe with organic sugar or something like it. While I won’t buy it because of the sugar, the nature nuts will love it (I say this kindly).

But wait. That isn’t enough! Instead of letting the market fix the con through financial means, there are now people who want LEGAL means of stopping what is already fixed! The morons (yes, morons) who were part of creating the FDA’s rules on labeling just found out that the FDA still failed, and they don’t realize that new laws and penalties will still fail in the future. The pro-Statist group the Center for Science in the Public Interest is calling for legal penalities against Cadbury Schweppes, the maker of 7-Up. They’re saying the FDA doesn’t go far enough in labeling. The news is all over the place regarding a lawsuit to challenge the label.

Yet the lawsuit would come too little, too late. 7-Up is already replacing the label again, this time trying a different tactic. The market has abandoned them, though. The Freaky Blonde loved sugar-free 7Up, but we’ll never buy it again just as we’ll never purchase Sony again because of their malware problem months ago. The market fixes things just fine, and much quicker than the State can ever do so. By the time this lawsuit is over, a bunch of lawyers will be wealthier, 7-Up won’t be touched because they won’t admit any liability, and the consumer will just pay more for the product. Who cares?

Good job, CPSI, I’d love to know how many lawyers and politicians are part of your organization. The public will be behind you, of course, because I guess it is obvious that we need more laws, even though the problem has already fixed itself.

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