Comment by oezi
7 hours ago
The key point contested is stated like this in the OP:
> A regulatory system that structurally insists on legalistic, ultra-extreme caution is bound to generate a massive negative return for society.
The OP mostly sees the downsides and disregards how hard earned any of those regulatory requirements are. Each requirement is usually the outcome of people being substantially impacted by industry before regulation. For instance the Thalidomide scandal with 10000 children born with deformities.
If OP doesn't grasp the origin and rationale behind regulations, it doesn't mean there aren't any.
It's not like before Thalidomide companies were just cool with putting baby-mutating pills on the market. There were existing regulations, and concerned voices, but those were ignored or silenced. Even after concrete proof of harm was obtained, the medication was continued to be sold in some places.
Diesel is another one of these stories - with dieselgate being Act 2 of the whole diesel scam - diesel was pushed as clean because it performed better on traditional tests of environmental impact gasoline was subjected to.
Any chemist with half a brain would've told you that's because it produces different combustion products, which are in turn, not measured.
Dieselgate was merely an attempt to continue the scam which shouldn't have been started in the first place.
And strict regulation more often than not, favors the established players who don't have to comply with it - example is housing, where construction of new housing is subject to rules old houses are not needed to comply with - artificially limiting the ability to solve the housing crisis while pushing up prices.
Various emissions and safety regulations in the auto industry were also basically straight up scams - they drove buyers towards more complex and less reliable, but more expensive to repair cars, and unfairly favored large vehicles which had an easier time complying with them.
The various driver assist safety systems were also found to not lower accident rates to justify their existence - and are universally hated by drivers everywhere.
Many people nowadays express the sentiment that they'd rather keep their old car around and drive it into the ground before purchasing a new one for these reasons.
And now that we have these strict safety regulations after the Thalidomide fuck up, drugs are more expensive than ever due to the extreme cost of going through the approval process, but at least they're safer. Except, of course, that whole episode where people somehow forgot that opiates were addictive. What are we paying for again?