Abstract
Although great numbers of the world's population still suffer from starvation, the possibility for genetically engineered foods to alleviate the problem creates great controversy. The authors address common concerns raised by anti-market opponents of the genetically engineered food industry and offer free-market approaches to the apparent dilemma. While such opponents always promote government intervention to alleviate the possible negative outcomes to the genetically engineered food solution, the authors illustrate the market's aptitude and methods by which it could prevail over the still existing starvation problem in the absence of any government intervention.;The paper also reinforces that the market is a process that rewards efficient and effective producers and drives the inefficient producers out of the market – even with respect to the genetically engineered food industry. The authors also describe the market process as parties engaging in the exchange of private property rights whereby the end outcome always results in a positive sum game to counter the ever present market failure issue. Furthermore, the paper provides evidence that those private property and technological issues that opponents commonly label as market failures constitute government failures instead.;However, most importantly, the authors uphold the irrefutable position that human beings are moral agents possessing free will and thus can make fundamental choices. Thus, the anti-market opponents' advocating of government intervention or elimination of an industry interferes with and manipulates the choices of the populace.
Recommended Citation
Christie Laporte and Walter Block,
A Free-Market Environmentalist Approach to Genetically Engineered Foods,
3 Santa Clara J. Int'l L.
278
(2005).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/scujil/vol3/iss2/8
