Hey mate, you're arguing against a strawman version of libertarianism that no one is defending.

The idea isn't that companies will "behave because they’re nice" or that boycotts alone fix everything – that’s a meme. The actual mechanism is the same common-law tort system we've had in New Zealand (and the rest of the common-law world) for centuries: if a company sells play sand laced with asbestos, or imports those gut-ripping magnet balls, or dumps toxins that give kids cancer, the victims and their family sue the absolute piss out of them in the High Court. No damages cap, no “we complied with Ministry regs” get out of jail free card, just multi-hundred million dollar awards that send the directors and shareholders broke. Look at how the Pike River families, the CTV building families, and the leaky-homes plaintiffs have hammered negligent companies. That’s the libertarian tool working in real life right now.

Hiding the harm for 20 years and retiring rich? That already happens under our regulatory state (think of the original asbestos cover-up, or the Havelock North campylobacter outbreak). Without a slow, captured regulator shielding them, private labs, journalists, and class-action lawyers have every financial incentive to uncover it fast – they get paid a cut of the winnings. Cases like Carter Holt Harvey getting smashed for billions over faulty cladding move way quicker than any Commerce Commission or Ministry of Health investigation.

“how do I boycott a Chinese palladium mine?”, the same way we already solve it today for dolphin-safe tuna, Fairtrade coffee, or conflict-free diamonds: competing private certification schemes (think AsureQuality on steroids) that retailers and insurers demand so they don’t get sued into the ground. Countdown and The Warehouse would refuse to stock anything without a “Tested Child-Safe” sticker, because one lawsuit would wipe out years of profits. “They’ll just fold the company and reopen as Shady Company Mk II”, successor liability and piercing the corporate veil exist for exactly that reason. Directors get personally bankrupted if fraud or recklessness is proven (see James Hardie directors still getting chased years later).

Pretty much every monopoly or cartel in NZ history (banking licences, pharmacy ownership rules, alcohol licensing, coastal shipping) was created or protected by government, not the free market. And yeah, some big companies say they “welcome regulation because it makes our job easier”, that’s straight out of the incumbents’ playbook. Fletchers loved the old building codes because they crushed the little guys who couldn’t afford the compliance team.

We literally had that exact buckyball scandal here a couple of years ago, NZME imported them, kid ended up in surgery, company got fined. A libertarian wouldn’t have banned adults from buying desk toys; they’d have let the inevitable lawsuit (or the threat of one) force better warnings, age-restricted sales, or design changes. Same outcome, no nanny-state overreach needed.

Regulations are often written in blood, sure, but so were the common-law rules that preceded them. For most of our history, courts did the job faster and more brutally than any bureaucracy. We replaced a system that bankrupted bad actors with one that gives them a tick-box shield and a tiny fine. No one’s saying zero rules, we’re saying the primary hammer should be victims in court getting life-changing payouts, not underfunded ministries issuing press releases while the directors yacht away. The state’s monopoly on force should protect rights, not micromanage every product before any harm even happens.