so cowboys meet Darwin and their population drops. An alternative is a "nanny state" where every personal choice must pass regulation. This is as old as the hills, but add new abilities to monitor for compliance at scale; new orders of magnitude advantages for certain high-tech; and new amounts of money in an active and massive economic system.

Without prescribing any solution here, is it that much of a stretch to think that the FDA in practice exhibited dysfunctional characteristics in markets? With the longevity of the players and the deep pockets associated with health care, is it a stretch to see large changes to the institution as constructive in the long-run?

>so cowboys meet Darwin and their population drops.

I'm not sure why you think "let people poison others for profit, their customers will die" is a good argument.

The point of the nanny state is to stop aggressive actors causing widespread harm.

not allowing companies to poison people for profit, ensuring people are qualified to do safety critical jobs. Making sure that companies can't cut OSHA for profit, ensuring that buildings are built to withstand the weather properly, even though it costs more.

A lot of the "nanny state" shit is there because people died. Now, of course some of it is because conservatives/liberals/that class you don't like got their knickers in a twist as well. But that tends to disappear pretty quick.

But that means that big money can use that as a spring board to remove expensive regulation.

You want clean air? but thats expensive! nevermind, soot spewing engines is manly, everything else is what those people you don't like do.

You want social media to stop sending porn to tweens? freedom of speech my friend! thats what makes america better than communism. You want your child to read the great american novels? oh did we say freedom of speech? no we meant don't do our country down.

All of that is theatre, what matters is the food and drugs you eat are safe, effective and well controlled so that the most amount of good is allowed with the least amount of harm