[adamlett]

Yes, imagine how much more competition there would be on the pharmaceutical market, say, if governments didn’t discourage innovation by demanding that products be tested and safe. Think of barriers to entry it creates in the chemical industry that waste must be discarded of in highly regulated (and expensive!) ways. Not to think of air travel, which is so regulated that I doubt we’ll ever see a startup in that market ever again. /s

[gwright]

This seems to me to be the trap of a false choice between regulatory power without bounds vs no regulation at all. A much more interesting discussion would be about the proper scope of regulation.

To take your example regarding pharmaceuticals, instead of mandating a particular regime of testing and efficacy, why couldn't the government require products that have not passed that particular hurdle be labeled as such?

[joncrocks]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma