[DangitBobby]

Not all things the free market produced actually have resulted in better health outcomes than if they had been disallowed (many result in the opposite, in fact) and certainly not better economic outcomes for the people who bought and used them. Regulation, as always, is a balancing act between enabling those who would do good and stymieing those (who with the best of intentions or outright sociopathy) would do harm.

So yes I remain unconvinced. Free market maximalists tend to highlight their favorite part of the story while ignoring history.

[ericmay]

Regulation has not always resulted in better health outcomes than if the product had otherwise been regulated either. We don't need to set up this false dichotomy between markets and regulation and then bash markets over the head with the negatives aspects while ignoring negatives outcomes as a result of government action which you seem to be insinuating.

So to remain unconvinced doesn't make sense here. Though I guess I can just say I'm unconvinced of government regulations because why not? Same line of reasoning that you're using here.

[DangitBobby]

Sounds like we just agree then. Regulations are necessary and should be tuned, and the Free Market can operate within those regulations, the best of all worlds is where these things work together.

[ericmay]

Sure but then I'm not sure why you disagreed with the OP? I don't think they said anything different than what I've written.

[DangitBobby]

> If the negative effect is this obvious in sunscreen, just imagine how much more impactful removing regulation on cancer drugs would be.

Note that I'm not even explicitly disagreeing with OP, you interpreted my "flipside" as a disagreement. It's undeniable that removing regulations in cancer treatments will be "impactful". Possibly even it will have positive impact. But I am unconvinced that this would be a wise pattern to adopt more broadly.

The original does not read to me as a call for tweaking regulations, it reads like an anti-regulation Boogeyman post. Forgive me for possibly over indexing on patterns I've observed from HNers making this type of comment.

They are of course free at any time to come in and declare that my characterization is unfair, at which my point about the flipside is still completely valid.

[ericmay]

Oh, I didn't read it that way at all which is why I interpreted your flip side comment as I did. You seemed to be defending regulation for no good reason in that context where the OP was pointing out how regulation seemed to (and I have done no research on this so I don't know) be holding the United States back, and then pointed out areas where we also have in their opinion regulations that are too strict.