San Francisco’s Plastic Bag Ban Is Killing People

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Why then, even in [r]epublican spheres, do we allow government to determine what is in our best marketplace interest?  The illusion is that the health code saves lives.  Does it?  Does the health code kill people?  Does the health code actually make people sick?  I’ll tell you what’s a great health code, and of course you don’t want to be the person who went into this place and got the E. coli or salmonella or whatever foodborne illness, but customers tend to not go back to restaurants that poison them.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  I want to go back to something.   I did the story about the plastic bags that have been banned.  You can’t use the disposable plastic grocery bags in San Francisco.  You have to bring your own knapsack basically.  You have to bring something to carry the groceries in that’s reusable.  This is now making more people sick.  People are getting foodborne illnesses because they’re not washing the bags.  There’s salmonella and E. coli and all manner of contaminants inside the unwashed bags.  You put more groceries in, take it out with your hands, touch your mouth, you’re sick.  There’s even an increase in death.

I want to make you a trial lawyer for just a moment.  No, I’m going to make you the leader of a public advocate hearing.  Let’s stick in California for a moment.  If this had been the Safeway Supermarket chain and they had banned plastic bags, and they had said: The only way you’re coming in here to get any groceries is if you bring your own receptacle to take it out; we ain’t providing no bags anymore and you can’t take our shopping carts out to the parking lot either.  If people started bringing the reusable shopping bag into Safeway and started getting sick, what would happen?  Andrew, what would happen if this was not the City Council of San Francisco’s edict but Safeway Supermarket’s edict?  What would happen?

AG:  Market share would suffer?

Mike:  Lawsuit, class action lawsuit.  Hell, the store would be lucky to survive this.  Can I be the only one in the class smart enough to figure this out and raise my hand and go, [mocking] “Ooh, ooh, Mr. Church, Mr. Church, I know”?  Why should the city government of San Francisco get away with this?  They will.  They’ll claim civic immunity.  They’ve got what’s called government or civic immunity.  They did this for the protection, for the enhancement of the quality of life of all San Franciscans.  Of course, they made them sick.  Their motives were pure as wind-driven snow, yet the results have been lethal.  If a company does this, if a private entity puts their own capital up and in their own private sphere says no more disposable bags, then people abide by the policy because they want to shop there and then they get sick.  They get the pants sued off of them.  As I said, they’re going to be fortunate to survive if that is their policy.

Why then, even in [r]epublican spheres, do we allow government to determine what is in our best marketplace interest?  The illusion is that the health code saves lives.  Does it?  Does the health code kill people?  Does the health code actually make people sick?  I’ll tell you what’s a great health code, and of course you don’t want to be the person who went into this place and got the E. coli or salmonella or whatever foodborne illness, but customers tend to not go back to restaurants that poison them.  Customers tend to not go back to grocery stores that sell tainted, rotten food that sickens them.

In other words, the market has a mechanism far more punishing than just a regulation.  The market will punish the bad actor to the point that they will no longer be an actor.  You are not under any compulsion currently to shop at any of these given stores, you don’t have to.  You can take your grocery business elsewhere.  You can take your burger business or your fried chicken or your sautéed green beans or whatever cuisine you care to eat today’s business elsewhere.  You don’t have to shop there.  You don’t have to eat there.  It’s the same thing with automobile repair services.  The best determinant of a good automobile repair service is not that it has some silly sticker it got from some silly, misinformed bureaucrat with the State of California or Louisiana, it’s that it fixes the cars, has a great track record.  It fixes the cars properly and at a price that people can afford or are willing to pay.  When it does not, it makes good on the promise.

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This is the market regulating bad behavior.  This is the market regulating bad business.  This is the marketplace seeing to it that the consumer is protected, but not all consumers because someone has to have a bad experience.  The illusion is that if you entrust any government with this authority, then no one will have a bad experience.  See San Francisco, California for the result of policy.  You can say the same thing in tens of thousands if not millions of cases, where the do-gooders at any given governing agency come in and say, [mocking] “Oh, there’s a problem here.  Let us swoop in and solve it.”  Their solution ultimately winds up harming the very consumers it intended to save.

It’s not just the bags.  As I said, we wouldn’t be hard pressed to find millions of examples of this ineffectiveness.  Sometimes it’s just a regulation that makes the product so expensive that fewer of them are purchased, thus the activity or function of the product it was designed to alleviate or make easier is not made easier anymore.  More knuckles are scraped, more miles have to be driven, more hours have to be put into doing it, more money has to be expended to achieve the exact same thing; see, light bulbs.  I keep waiting for the day when you go to Home Depot or wherever you go to shop for light bulbs and you can’t find the light bulb.  You go, [mocking] “Wait a minute, I don’t want them $6 Al Gore bulbs.  I want a regular light bulb.” — “We don’t have those anymore.” — “Why not?” — “Congress banned them.  It took us a while to catch up with the ban.  You’re going to like the Al Gore bulbs.”

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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