The difference I&#x27;d point to is that surgery as a system generally works. Fresh med school graduates get hired, train for a few years, and mostly become competent surgeons. Incompetent ones mostly get weeded out, or boxed into careers that minimize any harm they do. And they&#x27;re (rightly) forced by lawsuits to compensate victims of genuine malpractice.<p>Regulatory agencies, by contrast, are an extremely fragile system. That&#x27;s in the sense that if the right people are in charge, it could go well, but if the wrong people are in charge, it&#x27;s a disaster. And it&#x27;s completely commonplace to find that the wrong people are in charge.<p>A good system either makes it very hard for the wrong people to gain control, or, to use a Milton Friedman line, &quot;makes it profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing&quot;.<p>What I was trying to say with my comment is that neither of those conditions is true at most regulatory agencies.