Welcome to the raw world of un-controlled distribution meaning direct from the producer to the consumer. Institution building to fill the void of buyers beware and sellers take advantage will not be cured by a non-profit or independant entity. The Insurance companies assumed the risk of product liability, and malpractice then lobbied governments to regulate on their behalf. So the void must now be filled with private entities but with a profit motive since good nature in humanity cannot be trusted unless there is some pain for none compliance.

The Churches have the threat of hell, the government has the monopoly of violence, and insurance firms have the proxy of the government to enforce their risk based bets.

The only thing that will work is betting for a private affair. If a betting palor can establish a universal monetary unit or near universal monetary unit they can enforce standards without the proxy of the government. So punters are the answer and all folks must become punters assume risk and be able to offset it with liquidity based trading of risk on a micro as well as macro scale.

So does the ladder Mum uses to put stuff away in the pantry have a risk factor? Well probably the ladder does but is it worth Mum buying an insurance policy on? The manufacturer of the ladder might have an aggregated risk factor but in isolation it is too small to offset. If this is done without the government proxy then the ladder cost goes down, regulations are reduced meaning they are not there and the ladder manufacturer produces ladder within acceptable guidlines for safety established by the ladder manufacturer.

By using private standards established by the producer and accepted by the seller the value added becomes the quality of the product and a risk not readily offset by either party removing the frictional cost of insurance, regulations, courts and lawyers. So with the removal of defined regulatory enforced chains of supply the removal of government proxies via insurance and safety regulations are in need.

So does the consumer get less? Probably not since most government standards are implimented by corrupt officials and worked around by manufacturers; they will get better ladders less corruption, and cheaper products.

Direct means no governmentally enforced middle man to pay and pay and pay. I can underwrite the risk via a contract issued by the producer and pruchased by the consumer adding 2% to the products cost. Of course you must agree to my arbitration arrangements which makes me a taxer.

i've periodically made reference to situation being at the stage of the automobile industry in the 70s or possibly even the 60s aftermarket seatbelt stage ... a recent comment that kicked off a slew of followup comparisons
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#7

old reference that it may possibly require regulatory compliance
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm

some recent news items:

Sarbanes Oxley for IT security?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/03/sarbanes_oxley_for_it_security/
Business Inaction Could Lead to Cybersecurity Law
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1791566,00.asp
Inaction Could Lead to Cybersecurity Law
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=8353808

http;//www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#7

This first link is a redirect to www.microsoft.com at the time of writing.

Daniel - fixed! You are a victim of a 'bug' in some browsers (firefox?) which interprets a spelling error as a search instruction, and the most popular reference to http turns out to be Microsoft. If you made it https then you'd get Paypal. In bugs filed over at Mozilla, the last I heard is that spelling mistakes in security models do not constitute security bugs :-)

fingerslip

http;//www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#7

semi-colon should be a colon ... aka "http"-colon-slash-slash