> I assume that by this you mean something more nuanced than "we should abolish the FAA and let the airplanes crash until private enterprise solves it."

Strawman fallacy: It is in the interests of private enterprise to not have their $100-million+ airplanes crash, because it means $100-million+ going up in smoke. The owners of those planes would therefore have an interest in not having them crash.

> Or maybe "Let drug dealers (pharmaceutical companies) sell whatever the free market will bear without testing, safety, or the ability to hold them responsible."

Under this scenario, if the public finds out that a drug is harmful/lethal, the public jerks away from that drug towards solutions that have a reputation of working.

Is the resulting rate of fatality/worse-QOL lower than (a central authority filtering out drugs & holding them to standards)? No, definitely not. But the gap between the two is not infinite, and in most cases falls into an order of magnitude of difference.

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> I only ask, because there are some people who unironically think that we'd be more safe going back to the time before OSHA, or medical licensing, and some of them hang out here.

An axiom of (feeble-mindedness in the average person) is proposed here. People are as good/competent as the standards that they are held to.

> medical licensing

There's a difference between a certification of competency, and a deliberate constriction of the supply of medical residencies.

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/5550556-residency-cap...

If anything, I think software needs more of these sort of top down safety rules. I want to companies held financially / criminally responsible for data leaks. Just like restaurants are held responsible for food safety.