The more-or-less unregulated drug industry that you envision is something that already exists: it's called "health supplements." And it's a disasters; there's been quite a few studies that show that many of the companies selling health supplements can't even be bothered to put in their claimed active ingredients.

This isn't some hypothetical "well, we haven't tried to see what it would look like without regulation;" this is something that is already in existence and whose effects can be measured today!

> Should allow pharma to sell drugs to the market.

This was the case pre-FDA. IIRC, that is how heroin was sold in drug stores. See also OxyContin[0].

> Allow people to sue if they are harmed.

So you advocate a costly post-harm remediation instead of a preemptive solution provided by governmental regulations?

> Do not care about a government agency preventing access to new drugs.

See previous reference to heroin once being an over-the-counter product.

0 - https://apnews.com/article/purdue-pharma-sackler-settlement-...

Insanity. Do you honestly believe the average person (probably a sick one at that) has the resources and time to fight a large pharmaceutical company in court? And do you really believe that during the time between releasing the drug and losing in court the faulty drug wouldn't make the company much more money than they'd have to pay as compensation? The amount of organization it would require to beat a large company with its resources would guarantee that most abuses would go unpunished and suffering would certainly increase compared to an environment with well functioning FDA.

> Should allow pharma to sell drugs to the market. Allow people to sue if they are harmed.

This is a comical extreme vision of libertarian politics. Everything gets worse, lots of people die, but it's okay because we have a small principle of freedom. Yeah. Great.

If you're trying to persuade people you're doing a very shit job.

Tell me: how do you prove that a drug hurt you?

Spoiler alert: you cannot.

The reason clinical trials are so expensive and complicated is because it's extremely hard to isolate signal of "what is this drug doing to people."

So on what basis would you possibly sue a company?

As another commenter said, we have an entire industry of the form you desire: supplements. Go take them to treat your next illness so you can really experience the creme de la creme that FDA is apparently keeping from you. Good luck suing for lack of effectiveness or for any harms you encounter.

"If you think safety is expensive, try an accident!"

> The private company can fail.

Unfortunately, they don't fail often, and we've seen the government bailing companies out so they don't fail.

But in the end, it's a moot point—even when companies fail, they are replaced with companies that either are equally wasteful, or as the replacement companies grow, their wastefulness increases.

BBB is the most recent example of this. We cut spending across the board, shit on American, and in exchange we... raised the deficit by Trillions of dollars? What? How?

Republican fiscal policy.

You know so little about how the world actually works that it's funny you even try to speak about it.

Society would literally cease to function if the government stopped providing the services that your "friction" funds. Roads, the court system, police, waste and water, defense - these barely scratch the surface of what the US government provides, and yet remove any one of them and it would be enough to bring down the entire economy.

> The funds then are redirected to a sclerotic and uncaring state, and then the productive people are shamed when they ask for less of it to be taken.

In republican governments, yes this is real.

In democrat governments, the vast majority of taxes goes into productive issues such as education, transportation, and healthcare. Even the type of bills passed by democrats are friendly towards building a society.

Now, YOU may not want to pay for other's education, transportation, and healthcare. But a lot of people appreciate that access to high quality is not merely limited to the wealthy. This is why you'll see amazing companies in blue states vs red, you'll see amazing companies starting during blue federal governments vs red.

The data is very clear on what produces great outcomes for society. You might not want others to get a decent life but you need to admit your selfishness.

> Letting people keep more of the money they earned through productive work is how we increase wealth.

This isn’t even remotely true.