Internships, Starbucks, and Litigious Society

The way I see It #101

The most valuable things in life are priceless. They are courage, compassion, wisdom, respect for ourselves and others, and a host of characteristics that we call the beauty of the human spirit
Herbie Hancock
Musician. His work can be heard on Starbucks Hear Music(TM) station, XM Satellite Radio Channel 75.
This is the author's opinion, not necessarily that of Starbucks. To read more or respond, go to www.starbucks.com/wayiseeit.

I had a cup of coffee today at my internship, and it made me think a bit. Which was good, because before my coffee in the morning I can't. When my eyes had focused to a sufficient extent, I noticed that there was something on the side of the cup. With a disclaimer. Because Starbucks was worried that we might think they believe in the beauty of the human spirit.

And now, onto the point: my internship. I'm interning at the FTC. The Federal Trade Comission. We do something that until recently, I firmly beleived, as a right thinking libertarian, should not need to be done: we attempt to fix all the stuff wrong with a pure free market economy. And it works. Basically. "Sentence fragment. Good device."

Anyways, I read a couple pieces that the FTC gives out to interns, and being slightly more economically inclined than I would assume most of the law students that typically intern are, I was mostly interested in the economic analyses of what the FTC accomplishes. On that I read, which I could find, and was cited online, was written by a professor at Emory, Paul Rubin, about "Regulation of Information and Advertising." It was this type of thing that got me thinking - theoretically, the mission of the government in terms of economics is to make sure that everyone is OK. The consent of the governed is in part based on an understanding that the government will regulate trade, and so on. Anyways, that's for a later post. One that I started writing here, and decided 4 paragraphs in that it had wandered a bit to far.

And speaking of to far. Well, at some point it gets ridculous. Like the disclaimer on this cup. I understand that they have a boilerplate disclaimer, but this is silly. Of course, it's the result of our litigious society, whose litigaton holds everything in check. It's still sad. And amusing. "Sentence fragment. Good device."