[jkhdigital]

I think Nassim Taleb does a good job of identifying the core issue, which is “skin in the game”. A key problem with regulation is that it diffuses responsibility, in the sense that an engineer adhering to some regulatory scheme is partially absolved of personal responsibility for the outcome as long as they check the regulatory boxes. This point is raised by Brunel as well.

In other words, the harm of regulation is not that it trades progress for safety, but that it stifles both. See also Frederic Bastiat, The Seen and the Unseen.

The modern counterargument might be that engineered systems have become so dense and complex, and in some cases capable of catastrophic consequences for failure, that we simply can’t afford to let practitioners figure it out on their own.