I am not sure how this idea would work in practice generally, but I can see it in pharma. Labeling and certification could be a better alternative to onerous FDA licensing.
It takes too long and costs too much to bring life-saving drugs and equipment to the market. Paradoxically, the FDA is taking more lives than it is saving.
Examples of regulated markets as you're thinking of them would help. The one that comes to mind for me is NYC requiring restaurants to display their health inspection rating. Effectively there's an opt-in market for each letter grade, with F being the fully unregulated case. (Or would be if the city allowed Fs to stay open for people brave enough to eat there.)
Yes health codes are a great example, you could have a few different levels of safety with different requirements and auditing levels. To ensure consumers are informed, there would probably need to be a public record of foodborne illness incidents even at the "unregulated" restaurants.
Some other examples could include:
Occupational licensing: hairdressers, nail techs, and other professions require an official certification. But there could be less-difficult certification levels or an "uncertified" level.
Safety standards: Many products have safety standards like cars, furniture, and appliances. Like with the FDA suggestion, there could be different safety levels for each of these. Some standards would still have to be applied across the board for e.g. pollutants like lead.
I am not sure how this idea would work in practice generally, but I can see it in pharma. Labeling and certification could be a better alternative to onerous FDA licensing.
It takes too long and costs too much to bring life-saving drugs and equipment to the market. Paradoxically, the FDA is taking more lives than it is saving.
Examples of regulated markets as you're thinking of them would help. The one that comes to mind for me is NYC requiring restaurants to display their health inspection rating. Effectively there's an opt-in market for each letter grade, with F being the fully unregulated case. (Or would be if the city allowed Fs to stay open for people brave enough to eat there.)
Hi! Thanks for reading!
Yes health codes are a great example, you could have a few different levels of safety with different requirements and auditing levels. To ensure consumers are informed, there would probably need to be a public record of foodborne illness incidents even at the "unregulated" restaurants.
Some other examples could include:
Occupational licensing: hairdressers, nail techs, and other professions require an official certification. But there could be less-difficult certification levels or an "uncertified" level.
FDA: the FDA could provide different levels of safety for different drugs with different restrictions on their use. Scott talks about this a bit in this post: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-the?utm_source=%2Fsearch%2FFDA&utm_medium=reader2
Safety standards: Many products have safety standards like cars, furniture, and appliances. Like with the FDA suggestion, there could be different safety levels for each of these. Some standards would still have to be applied across the board for e.g. pollutants like lead.