Flame retardants: The role of Big Tobacco - chicagotribune.com
A superb article. I'm working now on an essay examining consumer trust of household commodities supposedly safe *because* they can be bought at a regular market and opposing it to instances where the commodity or thing in question has *not* undergone that sort of vetting (real or imagined). My guess is that most people are really not cynical (enough) and assume that their government is committed to making their lives safer. I'd further guess that in those instances, contexts, situations, where one must trust the evidence given by peers, there will be interesting behaviour effects.
This issue of trust in the presumed goodness of government authority (however that is read, but "state authority" is probably more accurate), has analogues in those services that bear some similarity to government works, in that they exist pretty much as if they always had existed, the way that roads, traffic lights, and so on exist for so many who are not intimately involved in government doings. The trust may not be by any means misplaced. But as there is very little in the political world, which is to say, the world, that is not actually disinterested, questioning the accuracy of one's trust simply seems a good practice.
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