Starting over from scratch with ALL agencies would probably be a good idea. They have become too ideological (suchas the EPA with its greenie global-warming carbon-overload lunacy) and too non-responsive and too far beyond either oversight or control.
It is very true that there are no market forces that would make a company stop dumping its chemical waste into the nearest river if it could get away with it. In fact, one of the reasons that China is so “competitive” is that it has absolutely no environmental standards and the rivers and land throughout most of China have become toxic dumps. So somebody somewhere has to make sure that there are some standards and some enforcement power...but as you say, the goal has got to be to permit business, permit production, but protect people from the harmful effects of unrestricted activities.
The problem now is that the EPA is not only anti-business, it’s anti-people, and is aiming for the ultimate greenie paradise of no human beings or forcing human beings back to the cave.
Agencies need public oversight, public policy setting, and should not become either enforcement arms of weirdness from the Executive Branch or independent operators taken over by ideologues.
Well stated and great point on China. It is interesting that the FAA was chartered to promote aviation, as well as promote aviation safety. Overall, they’ve done a great job at both (certainly relative to other countries), and would have done better without the lawyers chasing down every accident.