President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

Left to their own? No.

But my question is. ... would you fly an airline that didn't have a sterling safety record if the FAA didn't exist?

Safety standards evolve and stay in place on their own (without these regulatory agencies) because the people who bear the risks of unsafe things demand them. It's actually a competitive advantage to be able to prove that the product or service you offer is safe.

You remember those old tags on every electrical appliance that said "UL certified"? UL is not a government agency with people appointed to protect you. It stands for Underwriter Laboratories, which is a third-party certification company that formed before this idea that the world would fall apart without appointed regulatory czars overseeing everything (and doing any arbitray thing it wants).

It formed organically because it served everyone.

When electric items became common, some were dangerous and would start fires. Some very devastating fires, and the insurance companies were getting killed by claims and manufacturer liability issues.

As a result, they came up with safety standards and insisted on manufacturer items being tested. ... by the underwriters laboratory. Manufacturers were forced to subscribe to those safety standards for liability reasons, and those manufacturers began putting the "UL mark" on the products because consumers recognized the tag and sought out those products for their own safety. If you didn't have the tag, you were at a disadvantage and would have trouble selling anything.

Today we take that for granted. Most people have no clue why those tags even exist on some devices because things became pretty safe.

The point is, left to our own devices, people regulate their own safety. They demand it of anyone they pay to do something that might put them at risk. People would not get on airplanes if they didn't have reasonable assurance that the planes and their maintenance and operation didn't meet reasonable standards. Those standards would evolve without the FAA. What the FAA does at its worst, is lull people into a sense of complacency thinking that some ubiquitous nanny is protecting them from everything, so they don't demand that the airlines and manufacturers do it themselves and demonstrate it to all of us. They just assume that the government has taken care of it. That is a huge problem when the FAA is actually acting as a corrupt agent for the industry, because it's not accountable, and it does not get held liable the way the industry would itself without the FAA giving it cover.

How Boeing and the F.A.A. Created the 737 MAX Catastrophe

 

Indeed, me and my fellow ilk are all about fucking "unwitting consumers," because people are unable to think for themselves, make choices for themselves and demand safety standards for themselves. Never mind me having given you an example (and I can give you plenty of others) of exactly that happening.

Then, I give you a prime example of a regulatory agency -- that is accountable to nothing because its objectives is to get bigger and more powerful and gain government funding -- doing the kind of harm those agencies often do to all of us. You seem to get it. You explain regulatory capture to me.

And then turn around and say, "We need more of that!"