"Seriously, you must really be an idealist if you want to produce an honest business"

A little something a I stumbled onto, on Reddit. Take that as you will, but this sounds pretty legit to me:

Let's talk about olive oil industry. Everybody cuts corners all the time it seems. Me and my family are just about to get our own brand of Greek olive oil on the market. Seriously, you must really be an idealist if you want to produce an honest product ...

It starts with the workers. Almost everybody around here is exploiting illegal Pakistanis for the farm work. You might think that there are plenty of Greeks looking for work given the crisis and all but apparently illegals are still significantly cheaper ...

It continues with the oil mills. The olive-oil-mill-guys discharge the waste waters illegally into the environment. Plus, nobody gives a shit about the temperature during the extraction process. If you want to make sure that your oil is not extracted at temperatures above 27 degrees Celsius you have to bring your own thermometer and argue with the mill supervisor every hour or so. It's all sold as cold extracted oil anyway.

Then there are the authorities which are supposed to check the requirements for organic labelling and stuff. Nobody checks anything, it's all about the money you pay to the labelling organisation ...

Lastly, there are the Italians who come here, buy olive oil in bulk from the mills and mix it with inferior oil steeming from mass production in order to reach the treshholds of extra virgin olive oil. Which is a legal business practice but still appears to be kinda fishy to me.

As someone who likes their olive oil, this entire thing kind of triggers me a bit. But the one thing that sticks out, is the regulators. This affects EVERY business, and they admit it's all just a scam, where they get paid, and give their seal of approval.

In other words, government regulation doesn't protect the consumer, as intended, but simply pads the officials pockets while driving up the cost of product (Who must make up the difference.)

And this is why, even if I disagree with a lot of policies on the right, I can never really get behind the faith the left has in regulators. There's simply no way to be sure they're even doing their jobs, and no incentive for them to do their jobs right.

In Japan this isn't an issue where collectivist society eliminates corruption and personal greed.

This could easily be eliminated if they had functioning regulatory bodies.

You just need chemists who can get paid well enough to do this work.

Then randomly sample. And set clear guidelines on labeling.

Originally posted by TempAccount
In Japan this isn't an issue where collectivist society eliminates corruption and personal greed.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/19/business/carlos-ghosn-nissan-renault/index.html

https://www.france24.com/en/20181207-japan-justice-99-system-carlos-ghosn-arrest-nissan-kelly

Originally posted by shiv
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/19/business/carlos-ghosn-nissan-renault/index.html

https://www.france24.com/en/20181207-japan-justice-99-system-carlos-ghosn-arrest-nissan-kelly

That's all I needed to see.

Nissan has been a subsidiary of Renault since the 2000's anyway. It's a shame how sh1t their cars have become since then.

Originally posted by dadudemon
This could easily be eliminated if they had functioning regulatory bodies.

You just need chemists who can get paid well enough to do this work.

Then randomly sample. And set clear guidelines on labeling.

Not really. Those chemist are humans too, and humans are corruptible. All you need is just one person at the right level in your pocket.

Originally posted by SquallX
Not really. Those chemist are humans too, and humans are corruptible. All you need is just one person at the right level in your pocket.

True.

Grants could be offered to QA the government regulatory bodies. There was an idea put out there like this where the citizens hold the government responsible to govern and regulate.