[darkmighty]

> I'm not really convinced that our "advances" have improved the human condition

I'm baffled. I can't comment on this, if you really don't believe things like going from a life expectancy of 30 to 80 years improved human condition.

So you just wrote several extended paragraphs of arbitrary philosophical justifications that I don't if someone would really fit in, lest any group homogeneously makes assumptions such as "it must be true that our gigantic bureaucratic regulatory regime is in every way superior to what it replaced".

What we're arguing here is about a specific consumer protection mechanism; you seem to oppose consumer protection in general, in principle. I don't see how that is justifiable, that simple.

By the way, I own a significant amount of shares of several large banks. So technically, I'm a banker, but I sure don't want me to "give up and die".