This is an excellent example of how pop media sources often miss the forest for the trees. As you read this piece, you will probably note the acknowledgment of absurdity the authors offer. Clearly, based on the way the story is structured and the interviews conducted, the authors don't much care for this silly edict. But what is the basis of their dislike? It is the fact that they have differing opinions, and think it counter-productive and silly for EU gubment agents to claim something that runs so counter to what they, the authors, and many others know: drinking water DOES hydrate the body.

What is MISSED here is the larger question, which can be set up thus;

In this article, it becomes clear that the opinions of so-called gubment "experts" run counter to the opinions and conventional wisdom of millions of people and thousands of years of history. So you've got opinions versus opinions. This recognition begins to tear the artifice off of the so-called "greater wisdom of the state". In reality, it's just another group of people expressing their opinions about something. In a free world, free people would be able to express their opinions, hold different ones, and only THEY would answer for the correct or incorrect nature of their stances. To each his own. Live and let live. One day at a time. Are you a friend of Bill and Bob? (sorry, a very esoteric reference)... But anyway, the key is that we can see with this article that government bureaucrats' opinions are just other opinions, and in a free world, opinions can't hurt people.

But the difference here is the power of government to force its opinions on all others. Whether they are correct or incorrect is not the point, the point is that, if this were a case in which private individuals went around telling others they couldn't put something on their water bottle labels or else they would suffer fines, injury and possible imprisonment, we would not associate with those agressive individuals. But government lets ITS HIRED individuals do that to us, because it has the legal monopoly on agressive force.

Look at it another way. All of our actions, be they financial transactions, or conversations with others, or time spent alone reading, staring into space, whatever, are calculations we make to maximize our pleasure and minimize our pain. (Generally, humans tend to try to do this, though a small percentage derive pleasure from pain -- that's a different discussion.)  Thus, they are all part of a continuum of how we spend our time and efforts. So there is no difference, logically, between paying for a product from which we expect to get pleasure, and deciding to spend time chatting with someone when we could be doing something else. It's all "spending" in some way. So what happens if a person you are dating gives you the expectation that you will have a good time chatting over dinner, but the conversation is not what he or she claimed? What if a possible sex partner claims to be great in bed, but eveyone who has been through that experience has had a rotten time? Should the government step in and PROHIBIT that person from claiming he or she is good in bed? Should the government step in and PROHIBIT a boring person from claiming you'll have a nice time chatting with him or her? Of course not. We let our interpersonal relationships and experiences guide us. We let our interest in helping save our friends trouble, and our hopes that they will do the same, guide us.

Should the government PROHIBIT movie-makers from telling people their film is entertaining if it is deemed "not entertaining" by government bureaucrats? Of course not. And even though these examples center on subjective experience, they are relevant, because EVERYONE'S experience is subjective when it comes to spending. Some might say that there is a WAY to verify whether water hydrates, or a food has X amount of calories, and if the product doesn't conform to the claims, that is fraud and needs to be policed by gubment. But fraud is based on individual interactions, and whether or not each INDIVIDUAL is satisfied. Fraud is not something to be defined by government, because it opens a Pandora's box and allows bureaucrats and politicians to begin deciding FOR OTHERS whether they should or should not be satisfied.

In a free market, private assessors would have many more opportunities to offer opinions on all sorts of things, ranging from food, to health care, to clothes, to water. Science could be checked and verified in open ways, and the bad actors would be pushed out. In the US, tomato growers recently lobbied the federal government to get PIZZA categorized as a vegetable, so that more gubment schools could serve pizza. Would you do business with a private organization that took money from a special interest to influence it's consumer advice?

You'll keep paying the FDA, and EU citizens will keep paying the EU, whether you, or they, like it or not.

Here is the article!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8897662/EU-bans-clai...

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