By this logic the FDA would have to ban Tylenol and Robitussin. Tens of thousands of ER visits every year.

The government should generally be concerned with preventing deception and coercion and pricing externalities, because otherwise people have the incentive to do them and they would be prolific.

Things nature punishes directly don't need the state to deter them. They happen by accident rather than by motive and we choose purposely to spread the cost of this across the population as a form of insurance and a cost of living in a free society, sometimes even when the misfortune is a result of their own stupidity. Other times we send them a bill for costs.

It's almost like there's a balance of harms to be evaluated.

I'd bet the cheap availability of paracetamol etc. saves more hospital visits than it causes, but I don't have the data to hand.

Which is a highly context-specific evaluation, so is it better decided by the person with the most knowledge of their own circumstances, or across the board with no context at all?

It depends on the context.

In many, many contexts, people are explicitly not the people with the most knowledge about their circumstances. When I'm crossing a pedestrian foot-bridge, I have much less knowledge about whether this particular bridge is safe or not than the people who built it and the regulators who regulated it. The same is true when I drive my car, take medication, eat food, etc. etc. etc. I make risk decisions every day, but those decisions occur within a societal context, and part of that context is a general regulatory framework.

We are not all experts in everything. Which is why we (The People) gather together and delegate that responsibility in general to bodies of experts who try to make context-aware determinations about what in general should be allowed, what shouldn't be, and what should be left up to the end-user. It's a vast spectrum, and people often disagree about what goes where - this is fine! But if you want to get rid of the spectrum and have everything decided by people who should have "the most knowledge of their own circumstances", then it sounds like you're in favour of people dying and then blaming them for it.

Which is why we communicate. If the bridge has loose stones, you put up a sign that says the bridge is hazardous and has loose stones and provide a map with an alternate route. Now the person who comes up to the bridge knows that a professional evaluation designated the bridge as hazardous and why.

Most of the time that means you'll want to go around. But if the bridge is only two feet off the ground and you can see your lost dog on the other side, you might reasonably be willing to exercise careful footing and risk twisting your ankle to get to your dog.

Whereas if it's a hundred feet off the ground, you can try to get your dog later. But you might still cross if was something more serious, like you're in the woods alone and injured, you have to get across to call for help before you bleed to death and the alternate route is several hours longer.

It's a lot easier to get general information to the person in the situation than the other way around.

> But if you want to get rid of the spectrum and have everything decided by people who should have "the most knowledge of their own circumstances", then it sounds like you're in favour of people dying and then blaming them for it.

If a person in a situation makes a judgement call and they're wrong, they could die. If a legislator makes a judgement call for everyone all at once, people will die because different people will be on different sides of the trade off, possibly more of them than would otherwise if they'd each been able to make their own decision in context, and certainly some of them who would have lived if they'd been able to choose for themselves and choose differently.

It sounds like you want to trade the lives of people who choose well for the lives of people who choose wrong without even knowing which number is bigger. Or considering that the number of people who choose well could be increased in various ways other than coercion.

This is quaint, but not actually the problem. The problem is that every bridge manufacturer will cut corners on materials and design (because it's cheaper) meaning that there will be zero safe bridges. The bridge manufacturer's incentives do not line up with its users.

When I walk up to a safe-looking bridge, how am I supposed to know it's been made with insufficient rebar or dodgy concrete until it's collapsed on top of me? A sign?

> If a person in a situation makes a judgement call and they're wrong, they could die. If a legislator makes a judgement call for everyone all at once, people will die because different people will be on different sides of the trade off, possibly more of them than would otherwise if they'd each been able to make their own decision in context, and certainly some of them who would have lived if they'd been able to choose for themselves and choose differently.

Like I said, it's a balance of harms. There's both appropriate and inappropriate places for government intervention, and we're already legally not prevented (encouraged, even) from engaging in a bunch of very dangerous activities.

But the assertion that legislative intervention will always result in more deaths than letting people "decide for themselves" seems highly dogmatic and unsupported.

> It sounds like you want to trade the lives of people who choose well for the lives of people who choose wrong without even knowing which number is bigger.

We know which number is bigger. Go look at non-natural death rates in much countries with much smaller governments / regulatory frameworks.

Generally speaking, each person is best aware of their own context and can choose best for themselves how to take care of themselves and those in their family.

I'm not arguing against regulatory oversight of the free market - the FDA should exist. But there's a lot of talk about "harm reduction" and even "nudging" or "shaping" of society that I think needs to go away. I'm fine with billboards being banned (along with corporate lobbyism); but don't tell me I can't buy something because some other people could hurt themselves with it if they use it in the wrong way.

Yes, and I don't trust that the government can generate a one size fits all model that universally reduces harm. They're just not capable of it, and yet they comfortably assert their authority as if they are, and so they act without actually taking any measure of the impact of their own actions.

It's the problem with any agency. Sometimes the best answer is actually "do nothing" or most likely "regulate elsewhere through different authority."

So, I don't think the FDA paying an oversized amount of attention to one retail segment is going to do anything meaningful in the long term and we shouldn't have to pay for their amateur expeditionary efforts here, both in terms of funding the agency, and in allowing them to control markets on their own without any request or complaint process driving their actions.