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Comment by papito | Hacker News Reader

I hope everyone realizes now that the FDA is not a real regulatory agency. Regulations are written by the companies. At this point, the entire industry is essentially self-regulated. FDA is just a formality.

Boeing 737 MAX, anyone?

Yes, this is what happens when Big Evil Government is gone. People die.

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the opposite of "big government" is not "corrupt government". the FDA has all the authority it needs to prevent dangerous or ineffective drugs from being sold. in this case, the individuals in charge have simply chosen not to do their jobs.

> the opposite of "big government" is not "corrupt government".

It always has been. The point is not that it's impossible to imagine a libertarian utopia where lean and minimal regulation works for the benefit of all. It's just that everyone who's tried has ended up producing do-nothing systems like this.

It's absolutely true that the FDA "has" the authority. But it's run by appointees from a culture where "doing stuff" is perceived as "big government", and therefore bad. So they don't.

Are big governments less corrupt?

By the metric we're looking at, where a drug gets approved despite a unanimous thumbs down from the official advisory panel? Of course they're less corrupt. This simply doesn't happen unless the FDA is captured.

You’ve painted a black and white painting and are now trying to fit everything in the world into one side or the other. Read through the other comments in the top thread, it’s not nearly as simple as you’re making it out. And as usual the people trying to make it seem simple are either being naive or ignorant.

The FDA definitely isn't captured. The amount of fear and respect it commands in the industry is big even in the biggest medical device companies. I experienced how a competitor got shutdown, because they took a warning letter too lightly for another product in the same plant. The competitor lost more than 500m USD and never recovered in our market.

I'm really not sure I understand your argument here. the FDA is quite far from some libertarian ideal of minimal regulation. on the contrary, this news story makes a great example of the dangers of regulatory capture when a government institution literally decides on a case-by-case basis what products are allowed to compete in the market. I personally wouldn't go that far; I think it's worth having some oversight regarding food and drug safety.

since you agree that the FDA does have the necessary legal authority, I'm curious what you think the fix is here. if we give it even more money and legal powers, would that be enough for it to do its job? I somehow doubt that.

As someone who has actually interacted with the FDA during a drug approval this is actually the opposite of how it works.

Going to add this comment to the pile of “written in a tone of absolute certainty but completely wrong”.

Big Government != an effective FDA.

Regardless of the size of the government, you're always going to have problems.

The reality is surely not so simple. How come the FDA regulations are written by the companies but then the tests for covid were super slow to be approved. More probable explanation for what is happening here is bound to be complex.

Slow regulators are pro industry They keep competition out by bleeding then out of cash before they can go to market

Just because it is slow does not mean it is not a rubber stamp. Bureaucracy tends to take awhile whether it is effective or not.

It's institutional decay. Pumping money into a decaying institution doesn't fix it. Other actions are needed.

Or perhaps a concentrated effort by the donors to neuter the agency that is "in the way", no? This whole "the rotten government is so bloated and ineffectual" song is getting a little old.

Hmm, why doesn't the IRS have the manpower to audit the top 1% anymore? It's the weirdest thing.

The size of the federal government, as measured by spending, is larger than it has ever been. In what sense is "Big Evil Government" gone?

Which part of the government? Because the US is 19th, which is not bad at all.

https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/wb_government_effe...

Is it the military? Is that part of government spending, in your opinion? Because it's definitely not the FAA, or the FDA, or that agency that is supposed to oversee the housing market, or the IRS.

Any agency that is supposed to make sure that the consumers are not put in danger by reckless money-makers is at a constant risk of being castrated, especially with Republicans in the control room.

Regulatory capture, and gutting regulatory organizations of any teeth they may have once had. The money is going somewhere, and it's not to help the average people.

The size of the federal government, as measured by employees per capita, is smaller than it was in 1950.

> Yes, this is what happens when Big Evil Government is gone.

No this is exactly what big gov is.

Every large system is corrupt.

That’s human nature.

Don’t for one second think you can create a better system that works around human nature. You will fail every time.

> Yes, this is what happens when Big Evil Government is gone. People die.

This is Big Evil Government. Governments are bigger and more powerful than they've ever been.

Alright, then let's have regulated big government instead of unhinged corporatism.

GGP comment literally just explained what "regulations" are: "corporatism", as you put it. And you want more of them? So you want more corporatism, to solve corporatism?

Largely because they took the mask off and there’s no question they serve their corporate masters first, second and third. Anything relevant to people’s lives is considered culture / class warfare (surprise, the entities with money to achieve wide media reach are the ones saying that).

We need real anti-corporate reform before the guillotines come out. Both the far left (which is growing rapidly; Trump radicalized a lot of us) and far right (which is a circular Venn diagram with the Republican Party at this point) are working toward the future with the guillotines. Unless the politicians can get over their greed and actually do something for the people, that’s the future we’re looking at.

Lest you say this is just the US, pretty much every other democracy has this same problem right now. And the far left is often much bigger elsewhere than it is in the US.

The guillotines are never coming out. Just look at the Soviet era. Whenever there was a little uprising, the state just killed people. Then they killed some others to make an example. Secret police, surveillance, neighbors that snitch on you, we have it all now.

The psychological condition has been much too strong. People identify with the state. It's a part of them, it's a part of who they are.

That’s changing; we have strong anti-government groups on both the right and left. People identify with the mythology of America, but not the state.

We were literally 5 minutes from a guillotine event just 6 months ago. Those people didn’t go away and they only radicalized a lot of the left to oppose them (gun sales have been persistently high and all indications are that the strong majority of purchasers over the last year have been on the left).

The real danger is the far-right and far-left have a whole lot in common around economic conditions and the labor market. They just disagree about the cause. So the culture war is stoked to make sure they never find common ground.

> We were literally 5 minutes from a guillotine event just 6 months ago.

I don't think that's true, despite how the media may have portrayed it.

> So the culture war is stoked to make sure they never find common ground.

I do agree with this. That's why we have to challenge each other to look past this pettiness and focus on the real issues.

With all due respect, you don't know that. By pure miracle, the lawmakers escaped the chambers and very shortly after the seditionists flooded in. What would happen IF they got a hold of say, AOC or Pelosi is probably more grim than not. They were not there to have a frank conversation using some harsh language.

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