Who regulates the regulators? We need to go beyond review-and-approval

Several of the arguments and sources given make only sense at first glance, e.g. the argument about the FDA would be more convincing if not for the fact that pharmaceuticals still spend as much on marketing (that's the conservative estimate) as on R&D (they even argue that giving away free samples should not count as marketing I kid you not https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2019/7/...).

The arguments that anesthesists give a good example for a liability model because of some improvements made in the 90s, maybe makes sense from a purely US point of view. The question is (and this was not investigated in the source) how did the improvements compare in countries without the same liability but regulations. So would (or have) the same improvements being made with regulation.

Similay he brings up nuclear power and argues that liability would be a better model. Apart from the fact that the cost of nuclear vs renewables is not primarily driven by regulation (there was an analysis here on HN a couple of months ago, which I can't find on mobile atm), liability would kill nuclear in its tracks because no insurance would or could cover the potential cost a nuclear disaster.

Finally, why not talk about the FCC, a regulation agency which has made flying the safest mode of travel in the world. In fact if the aviation industry was as lax as the medical we had planes falling out of the sky multiple times a day. They only recently come under flag, because they have been dropping the ball because they got too cosy with the industry. Largely in the desire to speed up the process, which also refutes the argument that there is not counter regulation pressure.

Another example of pressure to reduce regulations are financial regulations. Their reduction arguably gave us (or contributed) to the GFC.

FCC or FAA?

I know we're all trying to be moderate here, but I'm not very good at that:

1) It is irrational. The cost-benefits of aircraft safety make no sense. Planes are held to a standard that we don't hold buses and trains to. We should strive to make rational decisions as a matter of policy.

2) There is no reason to think the US regulators are any good at what they are doing. As the thread root comment points out, the incentives are terrible. US industrial policy over my life time has consistently led to Asian growth and US stagnation in ways that were predictable. The US has banned most of the avenues that it could grow by, and coincidentally growth has largely stopped. Very similar story in Europe too, big focus on banning stuff (plus a bit of redistribution) and small focus on how to achieve more prosperity.

The US is dedicating the lives of countless smart people to taking a thing that was going to fly through the air like a bird and ... not changing the outcome much. They could have been doing something else that was more useful, like competing with China for telecoms leadership.

I don't think the evidence is there for this "having" to be minimised. The big picture looks a lot like people are behaving emotionally, that is sometimes leading to irrational decisions and those irrational decisions have added up to cause real harm. People should be more accepting of other people taking reasonable risk.

What are the poor ROI irrational decisions that the FAA makes on airline safety, how many lives do they save, and how many dollars do they add to the price of my ticket?

It's easy to say that things are not optimal. Let's say that's the case. What would you change?

> The US is dedicating the lives of countless smart people to taking a thing that was going to fly through the air like a bird and ... not changing the outcome much. They could have been doing something else that was more useful, like competing with China for telecoms leadership.

The US isn't a command economy, it can't redirect human effort like that, introducing subsidies into telecoms will distort the markets, and most of the country's intellect is wasted on financial innovation and adtech and middle management, anyways.