The goal isn't some nebulous definition of "freedom", where "freedom" is defined as "adherence to conservative orthodoxy regardless of the particulars".

The goal is something that works well.

Who decides "what works best", and how?

Edit: I say that each of us has to do that for ourselves.

Also, I'm not a conservative. I'm anti-religion, pro-selfishness, pro-gay, anti-environmentalism, pro-abortion, pro-capitalism. I'm a radical for reason.

But you jumped way past "working better" into some unrelated and 100% ideologically-driven conception of "freedom". What are we talking about here, my freedom to get poisoned by cough syrup because I didn't perform my own scientific studies on the matter with a large sample population?

How come freedom only ever applies to the already-rich cutting corners for an extra buck?

It doesn't. Yaron Brook just addressed this in a debate held in New York last week:

"The biggest victims of government intervention in the economy, the biggest victims of socialism (as someone who came from a socialist country, where government intervened a lot more than here) are the ambitious poor - the people who could rise up under freedom.

The people who want to work, who want to make something of their lives, who want to succeed, who want to prosper. They are the real victims. They are the ones we should shed tears for when we regulate, when we control, when we put them through public education, when we put them through the whole social mechanism, when we use welfare to institutionalize them into poverty and take away their sense of personal responsibility and personal morality that is so crucial for their development as successful, happy, prosperous human beings. If anything Objectivism should rally around, it's those people. You know, I wasn't rich, I was an ambitious poor guy. I came to this country with nothing. Those are the people who are the real victims of state intervention, and the real benefactors of freedom and capitalism."

This quotes is from the last five minutes of audio: http://www.archive.org/details/FirstPrinciples-Government_Wh...

To his point, in the last 30 years, we've slashed taxes for the rich and really slashed welfare. Shouldn't the poor be picking themselves up by their bootstraps by now? Or is something a little more robust than "I don't even need to know the details, the problem is SOCIALISM and the solution is FREEDOM" required?

And meanwhile, none of this has anything to do with the very real problem of FDA regulatory reform. You haven't laid out the first reason why I wouldn't be poisoned by a bottle of cough syrup from duane reade or why it should be on me vs the drug company to prove that their cough syrup is safe.

I suppose we could always have a company that was in charge of rating drugs, and the drug companies could pay them for ratings, like AAA and BBB. I mean, it works for the financial industry, right?

No, just see the other comment right below:

You should be free to do this yourself or to seek the advice of those you've chosen to trust on scientific (or any other) matters.

As to your comment about the financial industry: it's inapplicable because it's not a free market. In a free market, there would be no Federal Reserve, no Fannie or Freddie to distort the market. Immoral firms such as Goldman Sachs would have nothing to take advantage of.

Gotta go, but on that whole federal reserve thing, go take a look at the boom/bust cycle in the US prior to and after establishing the federal reserve.

Again, it's not about what you find ideologically satisfying, it's about what actually works in the real world.

EDIT: btw, the fed and fannie/freddy had almost zero to do with the housing crisis. The problem was the multiplied leverage much more than the housing debt itself, and fannie/freddy's rules about loans to minorities only affected a miniscule % of total defaults.

Actually, it's got to be both. Being smart is being able to correctly predict things, and that requires both theory and empirical observations. While everyone has some sort of philosophy, some philosophies are better in the real world than others.

You should be free to do this yourself or to seek the advice of those you've chosen to trust on scientific (or any other) matters.