By Anthony Gregory
Including Toyota. Of course, customers are king and should be free to boycott any business for any reason—and the freer the market the more this is possible. But Toyota claims, somewhat credibly, that the accusations about its cars’ “runaway acceleration” are belied by the failure to repeat the incident.
I still reserve judgment on this, and I believe that is the best bet. At least when it comes to piling on the demonization of a company and the bolstering of the U.S. regulatory state—a government in bed with Toyota’s American competitors—to combat this percieved problem. In any event, the market has been shown to be the best means of regulating this problem in the real sense. Every time a percieved, however isolated, problem with a company makes the news, calls for bigger government predictably follow. This is the same government whose FDA has deprived millions of Americans of effective pharmaceuticals while rubberstamping the drugs whose manufacturers are politically connected, whose warfare state kills civilians abroad and whose law enforcement jails peaceful Americans at home, whose Social Security Administration and IRS forces workers into a corrupt scheme that makes Ponzi look humanitarian.
It is prudent to err on the side of caution, of course, but also to reserve judgment when the big media all line up to villianize a business—especially a business competing with the favored firms of the protectionist corporate state.