> If this had been the policy, we’d still be technologically in the 18th century.
Health and safety, and public safety, are as much an innovation as anything else since then.
The laws that say we need testing etc. come from the observable dangers of much of the tech of the 18th and 19th and 20th century. The rules that say we can't buy thorium toothpaste any more* and why car headlights and signal lights are mandatory, are written in blood — and you can witness the result of failing to adhere to such principles and winging it with stuff like the 2020 Beirut explosion, or even that the first Starship test flight covered a nearby city in dust from the destruction of the insufficient concrete launch pad.
Health and safety, and public safety, are as much an innovation as anything else since then.
The laws that say we need testing etc. come from the observable dangers of much of the tech of the 18th and 19th and 20th century. The rules that say we can't buy thorium toothpaste any more* and why car headlights and signal lights are mandatory, are written in blood — and you can witness the result of failing to adhere to such principles and winging it with stuff like the 2020 Beirut explosion, or even that the first Starship test flight covered a nearby city in dust from the destruction of the insufficient concrete launch pad.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doramad_Radioactive_Toothpaste