Milton Friedman on Self-Interest and the Profit Motive 2of2

This kid got smacked in the mouth.

Then to reduce your risk of dying in a horrific plane accident you could drive or ride a boat. If you don't want to run those risks, ride a bike, and if that's something you don't want to risk, walk.

In any case the company isn't always automatically liable, and if they are, then your family can bring about extremely damaging lawsuits, assuming your dead, there fore leveling the risk factor and making it more profitable to insure the maximum safety of all passengers on board.

While you are waving your arms around to create physical energy, real human beings will be out there bartering currency or trading FRNs to obtain seeds and land in order to produce food. Scarcity is a HUGE piece of the puzzle. BTW - if you think about hopping my fence onto my land to take my food without my onsent, then the scarcity in the lead industry will increase as well.

Hostile crowd.

The idea that it's up to the consumer to decide to buy a product or not, and not hold the manufacturer accountable is a false one. If I start smoking today, and develop lung cancer I cannot blame the cigarette manufactuer. I freely decided to smoke knowing the danger. If I take a flight on a commercial airline, and due to a known but concealed defect with the plane I die in an accident, then the company is liable. I cannot be expected to know all the dangers when purchasing a product.

Every airplane has "defects". The wheels could be made stronger (at additional expense), the aluminum body could be made stronger (at additional expense).  Each time the cost of flying goes up, more people drive that might have flown. As you know, driving kills more people per mile than flying. In addition, when there is REAL criminal fraud involved, the individuals who committed the fraud should be prosecuted...not the whole company.

"due to a known but concealed defect with the plane"

You use the word concealed defect, so you are implying that the airline is engaging in fraud. In that case, yes, the company would be held liable in a court of law. Milton Friedman was talking about not defects, but additional instalments to make the plane or car safer.

"I cannot be expected to know all the dangers when purchasing a product."

No one can. What if you got a stroke after smoking? Can you blame the cigarette manufacturer? Do you know all the dangers of smoking?

MF argued that freedom is the key. Freedom to choose and to decide. I think, in that respect, he is correct. My question is, how does the consumer get the information to freely decide. Taking the Ford Pinto as an example, how does the consumer decide that the design flaws that the Ford company took are a risk worth taking? Would MF have been in favour of opening up Ford company records to show the inherent risk involved in buying a Pinto?

@kady7869
The problem with information is that it usualy cost resources to get.
The consumer should be free to decide if he spends his resources on "buying" information to make his decition, or if he rather take a decition with some degree of uncertainty.
It finaly comes to how much does the information cost, and how much is the consumer willing to pay for it.