Arnold Kling    Consumer Protection  An Entrepreneurial
Generation?... What an Economics Major Should...  Richard Posner
and Gary Becker have a rare disagreement. Posner writes,  There
are three possible responses to the problem created by consumer
information costs. The first is to require producers to provide
more information; the second is to ban products upon on the
basis of a judgment that if consumers knew the score they would
not buy the product in question; and the third is to leave the
burden of information on the consumer, thereby increasing the
incentive of a consumer to inform himself about the products he
buys. Often the preferred ranking will be 2, 1, and 3. Banning
the product eliminates information costs, though to justify so
drastic a measure requires a high degree of confidence that
informed consumers would not buy the product if they knew the
facts about it. If as I believe trans fats have close and much
more healthful substitutes that cost little more than trans
fats, the attempt to ban tr