[wpietri]

That's just not the only way things change. Look, for example, at the establishment of the FDA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Food_and_Drug_Act

Industrial food companies were taking significant liberties with food quality and safety. And it was apparently fine! People appeared not to care. Then Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle happened to catch the popular imagination, leading to a wave of outrage and investigations. People still "didn't care" in the sense of, say, not buying industrially produced food. But they did very much care, leading to a regulatory regime that has lasted more than a century.