Price, Market Failure, and public policy.

So a friend sent me this article---Roundup: Birth Defects Caused By World's Top-Selling Weedkiller, Scientists Say

Which says:

"The chemical at the heart of the planet’s most widely used herbicide -- Roundup weedkiller, used in farms and gardens across the U.S. -- is coming under more intense scrutiny following the release of a new report calling for a heightened regulatory response around its use.

Critics have argued for decades that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and other herbicides used around the globe, poses a serious threat to public health. Industry regulators, however, appear to have consistently overlooked their concerns.

A comprehensive review of existing data released this month by Earth Open Source, an organization that uses open-source collaboration to advance sustainable food production, suggests that industry regulators in Europe have known for years that glyphosate, originally introduced by American agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in 1976, causes birth defects in the embryos of laboratory animals."

My friend then asks:

"Just for a point of discussion, Do we react by creating a public policy about it and impose regulation to preserve and protect the environment and our health, or do we impose a Libertarian stance?"

I think this is an example of an all too common confusion between political stance and markets. The assumption that being left/right/center leads one to automatically take a stance on the economics involved is flawed. 

This is an example of a market failure. A big concern for economist--in terms of behaviors that cause price to accurately reflect true cost on the supply/demand curve--is rent seeking and regulatory capture. 

I don't see this as a Libertarian vs. non-Libertarian choice. The decision to let markets accurately price goods can be found across the political spectrum. 

Interventions, when market failures are involved--while often imperfect (with needed tweeks because of possible over corrections) isn't dead on arrival for economist. 

Economists that like to trounce around hiding their political leanings by claiming "economics" will try to play the general public on this but people shouldn't fall for it. Economics says market failures can be corrected. Thats it. Market failures should be corrected via policy when it comes to really important goods/services.

In this case market equilibrium of supply and demand is not happening and so price isn't being accurately reflected. When you don't regulate these kinds of poisons you are creating a market failure leading to negative externalities that could be corrected through smart policy and better regulation. Unrestrained selling of poison to ill informed people leads to costs being shifted away from the producer unbeknownst to the buyer of said product. Economists would say market intervention is warranted if people want to allow price to do its handy work. The decision to not intervene in the market in circumstances of market failures are political decisions not economic ones.

Having said that the general leanings would probably find that right-libertarians ("Libertarian Party" folks) will defend the individuals right to poison others, left-libertarians like myself, most Democrats and moderate Republicans would say intervene. The recognition of "the right to poison" is nothing more than Ayn Randian pathology from sociopaths and (un-diagnosed) depression in people who either weren't loved as children, or dropped on their heads.