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I'm sorry for what happened to your sister. As I said earlier, the US health insurance system is extremely dysfunctional. I do however think you are grossly overestimating the effectiveness of contacting members of Congress. They neither have any reason nor any ability to help with the FDA or most other things. I doubt most members of Congress could even do anything (except travel aboard) to save their own life if they needed a drug the FDA had not approved, and they did not qualify under the very limited right-to-try law (that was still a step in the right direction).
Unless you are wealthy enough to compete with the pharmaceutical companies that lobby to maintain the current rules, you can have no real influence over the FDA. You might as well write the insurance company's shareholders, and get the same polite version of "no, we like money" back.
I don't think Somalia is an example of when states get out of the way. I think it's an example of one extremely bad state collapsing and being replaced by many less (but still very) bad states fighting each other in a civil war. It was however a significant net improvement, and I'm glad Barre's regime collapsed, even if it lead to more piracy.
Somali privacy is extremely profitable because of the geography and shipping lanes of the Gulf of Aden, and the pirates certainly operate on a market system, even if they don't respect outsiders property rights. It's not like the US government does either. The people who have their homes destroyed by the US military have no more chance of getting compensation than the owners of cargo hijacked by Somali pirates. If we also consider governments use of asset forfeiture, taxation, fines, licence fees, etc. I think it becomes a little ridiculous to focus on the Somali pirates. There are more piracy in the Gulf of Guinea anyway, so why single out Somalia?
I agree that the medical insurance industry in the US is extremely dysfunctional (in large part because of regulations), but people have much more recourse when they are harmed by an insurance company compared to a government agency. I doubt more people die as a result of insurance companies decisions compared to the FDA's decisions. I can't find a good estimate for the number of deaths caused by insurance companies, one study from 2009 estimated 45,000 deaths annually linked to lack of health coverage in the US (these would be more comparable to those who die because of the FDA because they similarly lack recourse)[0], this is probably much lower than the FDA's death toll. FDA was also likely a contributing factor in the deaths of many of those who died due to lack of health coverage because the FDA's licencing costs and the slow and arbitrary way it processes applications are a significant reason for the high drug prices in the US.
[0]: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-fin...
The defining characteristic of the state in this situation is undoubtably it's capacity for violence. That is what creates the entire situation. If it were not for the state's superior capacity for violence, it would not be able to enforce its decisions by violence, and everyone would be free to decided whom to trust. To describe the state as "representing the collective will and interest of the people" is simply incorrect. Even if the state represented the will of the majority, it would be wrong to equate the majority of people who live in a particular place with all the people who live in that place. Just as might doesn't make right, neither does being more numerous. In reality, the state doesn't even represent the interest of the majority of people, but only a tiny fraction of people with sufficient wealth to lobby effectively.
Even if you had a hypothetical state that only existent to enforce the will of the many on the few, such a state would probably be wrong more often than an individual because while the wisdom of the crowd can work, it can be easily undermined under conditions I think would be inevitable in such a scenario[0]. A million people who can't tell the difference between psychology and psychoanalysis won't be able to choose between electing a psychologist or a psychoanalyst, any more than they can choose between believing a psychologist or a psychoanalyst. The only difference is that under the majoritarian model, everyone is forced to accept the choice of the majority.
The situation I described happens all the time. It's the rule, not an exception. The link I posted includes several examples. The FDA has become a little better in the last few years, but it continues to kill people by refusing to allow them access to drugs and medical devices. Here is a more recent article specifically about the delay in approving the covid vaccines: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/fda-delays...
This is not primarily about people who diagnose themselves, although they should have the right to do that as well. It's about people who are diagnosed by a doctor who knows how to help them, but would go to prison if they tried. Often the drug has been used in other countries for years, and the company has simply not paid the FDAs exorbitant licence fees. One example from the link I posted in an earlier comment:
> Pharmacologist William Wardell concluded that the five year delay in allowing the hypnotic Nitrazepam to be used in America (after Britain’s approval) cost 3,700 lives. He believed that the FDA also cost thousands of lives by preventing the sale of the first beta‐ blocker Propranolol for three years after it was available in Europe, and another seven years before it could be used for its most useful purposes. Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) figured the annual beta‐ blocker toll at 17,000. Overall, he wrote, “as many as 100,000 people may have died waiting for FDA to act.”
[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2017-biological-markets/
No, I don't think the state should play any role in making markets, in this case or others.
Nobody is arguing against listening to experts or using processes to make safety decisions. I'm just saying that you should not enforce your judgement on other people. I don't object to the state or anyone else making recommendations or to other people following them. Everyone is ultimately responsible for deciding whom to trust. If you trust the state, you should be free to defer to their judgement, as you will be the one to pay the ultimate price if you are wrong. If I trust some other organization, I should be free to do the same. The state's ability to enforce its judgement by means of violence doesn't make it more likely to be correct. Might dosen't make right when it comes to science or individual trade-offs.
If I'm in the shop buying shampoo, I can look for the name or logo of an organization that I trust to determine the safety of products. If I need a medical product that the FDA has not approved, and I'm unable to travel aboard? What I'm I supposed to do? Die like thousands of people before me[0]? Is that just "Tough luck buddy" to you because your ideology is more important than my life and freedom?
[0]: https://www.cato.org/commentary/end-fda-drug-monopoly-let-pa...
I would support allowing companies to opt in to regulation (and pay the full cost of it) and only allow companies that have opted in to claim to be regulated by the relevant agency. That way, those who trust the state can choose to only use things the state has approved and no-one else will be harmed when the state is wrong.
Replacing consumer choice with state choice leads to less freedom for the consumer. There are often trade-offs that need to be made with regard to the repairability of a product (e.g. a phone's thickness / water resistance / ability to replace the battery), and for the state to interfere in those decisions by force leads to fewer options for the consumer.
Additionally, we should keep in mind that the state has no incentive to help consumers, as they don't have the resources to lobby effectively. I think "right to repair" laws are primarily about helping some companies at the expense of their competitors and customers.
If nothing else, I think they should show more respect for people who are victims of the police and state-sponsored surveillance.
Imagine meeting someone you love and having a child with them, just for them to disappear one day. Imagine finding out that they actually never existed and were actually a government agent who was assigned to infiltrate your life and possibly frame you for daring to speak against the state. Imagine being that child. Or anyone else in these peoples lives for that matter.
Or imagine finding yourself abandoned in a foreign country by your closest friends of several years who were actually government agents you met on a holiday you won in a fake competition created by the government, then find out that the company you worked for was also a fake company set up just to try to entrap you in some elaborate plan, so now you are unemployed, and everything you said in your own home or car in the last several years probably exists forever on a government server somewhere. Imagine then opening a newspaper and reading that the police claim to be underfunded...
Imaging what it does to a person to find out that their life for years has been a real life government conspiracy. That their friends, neighbours, co-workers, partner, etc. are not real and that they have had no privacy. It may not even be you they are after, but someone close to you.
These are both real cases, one from the UK where this cop is from and one from Sweden where I'm from, and they are far from unique.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/25/activist-dec...
https://www-aftonbladet-se.translate.goog/nyheter/a/dwwdlO/p...
Government is by consent in the sense that you need many people to voluntarily cooperate to run a government. That doesn't mean that the government doesn't impose those people's preferences on others by means of violence. The same applies to gangs and other similar organizations. They are run by consent, but that doesn't mean everyone who interacts with them are doing so consensually. Being able to move out of the gang/state territory doesn't make the interaction consensual.
Governments usually try to maintain a monopoly on violence, so when other organizations use violence to impose its members' preferences, it's usually either in defiance of the government or on behalf of the government. Governments also often use violence on behalf of others. When an employee is (indirectly) forced to work for a corporation, it's almost always enforced by the violence of a government rather than the corporation itself.
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin don't have that feature, but that just makes them more like fiat currencies. You could argue that fiat currencies are backed by the force the state is willing to use to get its population to pay taxes in the currency, but that's not a stable backing, as the state could decide to accept another currency at any time. Some states do allow for tax payments in other currencies, which means that some fiat currencies have no backing by that mechanism. Some people are also forced to pay in Bitcoin, for example to ransomware, which should have a similar effect in forcing people to use the currency.
Ultimately, I don't see why a currency would need backing. There is nothing wrong with a currency gaining value purely from its value and utility as a currency. Many other valuable things such as precious metals and art gain a large part of its value in the same way.
It's ironic that you accuse me of wanting to enforce my views on others when that's precisely what you are arguing for, and I'm arguing against.
Regardless, it's not like you can avoid these laws by not incorporating. An individual who runs a site with user-generated content in a way the government doesn't like would be in even more trouble.