Who regulates the regulators? We need to go beyond review-and-approval
I think the core problem is the incentives of the regulators. Groups like the FDA are democratic institutions, but if their only goal is to have the approval of national politicians, the feedback they get is either negative if there's a bad product released, or neutral if there is no terrible product released. The FDA must have done something right - what have they done right? We don't even know. Their incentives are basically, stop as many drugs as possible, but avoid public scandals.<p>As long as the incentives stay the same, I don't see how a change to, say, liability model, would make any difference. The regulator can still set legal penalties high enough to stop any innovation, if they want to.<p>Ideally there would be some positive incentive on the regulator as well as negative incentives. Perhaps somehow they could be responsible for the overall success of an industry, rather than just avoiding the negatives.<p>It's especially hard though when you are regulating foreign businesses. It might be dumb to prevent the Microsoft-Activision merger, but what incentive do UK regulators have to get it right?<p>If the incentives are all just politics then maybe the only real answer is politics, like the YIMBY movement seems to be somewhat effective at fighting anti-housing regulation. It is not really changing the paradigm per se, it is just changing the rules to be more pro-housing.