You're completely missing the root of the problem, which is informational assymmetry.

Having multiple vendors to choose from doesn't do anything for me when I can't make an informed choice.

When you eat at a restaurant, are you making an informed choice?

I'd argue no. I have no idea if the cook that made my meal 30 seconds ago actually followed proper safety guidelines.

However, I think in general, the probability is decent that they did, as they are highly incentivized to do so. Because a failure to do so could mean the end of their business.

What I'm getting at is that there are specific scenarios where market forces are stronger than the ability to make an informed choice. And protect you as the consumer better.

> When you eat at a restaurant, are you making an informed choice?

Given that they don't give me a tour of the kitchen, and that I can't actually verify that they haven't been using meat knives to cut my salad, no.

I take it on faith that the food inspectors will ruin their business[1] if they are regularly pulling those kinds of stunts. I take it on faith that the staff have regulations to lean on when they push back on systemic unsanitary practices.

And no, Joe Somebody complaining on reddit that Earl's gave him food poisoning last week and that we should stay away from Earl's doesn't actually inform me that I should avoid Earl's. I don't know Joe, I have no reason to believe him. For all I know, he's just a disgruntled shill who is just making stuff up. Or maybe Earl's bought a batch of contaminated products from further upstream. Or maybe he caught a stomach bug from somewhere else, and is blaming them. Or maybe he's right, but Earl's actually has a lower incidence of food poisoning than the chicken joint across the street, and they just got unlucky.

I have a lot more confidence in an inspection, than in some noise someone's making on the internet, or in some celebrity endorsement on the TV.

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But there is some aspect of eating at a restaurant where I do make an informed choice.

Does the food look good? Does it taste good? Is it cheap?

These are the easy to observe bits of information about it. I can actually meaningfully express my preference there, and make an informed decision.

And guess what? There aren't any inspectors for any of that. My town doesn't employ a taste comissar, or an art critic for their FoodSafe team. Because I can tell at a glance which I prefer.

I can't tell at a glance which restaurant is less likely to have the kitchen staff poison me.

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[1] In practice, they'd much rather work with the business to bring it into compliance. You know, positive-sum sort of interactions that leave everyone who is acting in good faith better off.

> However, I think in general, the probability is decent that they did, as they are highly incentivized to do so. Because a failure to do so could mean the end of their business.

Yes, their business will end because they'll fail an inspection. As it turns out, these incentives are provided by regulation, not by the free market.

There's abundant history of market forces totally failing to end food businesses that didn't follow food safety practices. The Jungle was published in 1906 documenting meatpacking's horrors and not a single change was made until the Pure Food lobby pushed through regulation, and that was at a time when meatpacking wasn't a concentrated industry. In Upton Sinclair's time, there were at least 9 companies operating in the Union Stockyards where he researched meat packing (it's unclear to me how many there were total).

Look around at food safety inspection reports for your town and you'll very quickly find restaurants that were doing great financially until regulators stepped in and cited them for dangerous practices. Restaurants are, again, a highly competitive industry.

It seems like you're starting with your favored economic ideology and pretending it tells you anything about reality, instead of just looking at reality and seeing what's there.