Of course. Milton Friedman and many others have discussed at length marketplace mechanisms that would arise to handle all these issues. It is too involved to discuss here at length.
The simplest analogy is Underwriter's Laboratories started in 1894. Insurance underwriters helped fund UL. They had an interest in products being safe. This was all done without government "regulations."
Because most people have lived their entire lives with government providing so called "regulation" for safety, they have no way to conceptualize how a free people in the marketplace could provide much better benefit at lower cost and a more timely manner.
If you have a chance search out Milton Friedman discussing the very negative aspect of the AMA (via government grant of power) licensing of Medical schools.
I can't not think of any serious problem areas of our society where the government is not dominant, not one.
Without the record keeping and databases maintained by the FDA, many drugs with long-term side effects would remain on the market. The free enterprise system has no way to track long term effects. It is questionable whether it would even effectively reveal short-term effects.
The FDA has caused more deaths than they ever have prevented. Even with the FDA, drug companies always maintain sophisticated databases of their drugs and long term effects. Let's suppose the FDA did not exist. Companies would have a vested interest in forming an equivalent UL type consortium to help standardize and lower testing costs. Products would get to market much more quickly and be just as safe.
The FDA arose because control freak politicians didn't allow a market solution to arise. The FDA is just another anti-market bureaucracy that does more harm than good.
Because of the FDAs ridiculous regulations there are many untold products that would come to market but do not because of the 100s of millions it takes now to jump thru the inefficient needless hoops (that have nothing to do with safety)
It has been documented that there are illnesses and diseases that affect a small number of people that could likely have a cure, but companies cannot bring them to market because of the cost floor the FDA imposes.
Remember, profit is a good thing and the main reason that companies develop products.
Another whole aspect not discussed is the evil Trial lawyer lobby allowed to unfairly rape many companies in an unjust manner. Sorry to go all over the place, but I am doing other things as I respond. Have a nice day..
I love how an economist with no understanding of exactly how difficult it is to definitively establish that a specific cause has a specific, but extremely rare, result has so much faith in "market mechanisms" to handle these issues.
I purposely gave an example where other factors complicate the relationship between the cause and effect. Real life situations are actually more complicated than my example. You did not give a specific mechanism by which the market would uncover the fact that my hypothetical drug has a minute chance of causing seizures. If making this discovery were up to the market, the drug would continue to be sold and no one would probably ever know about its side effect. With the FDA, however, a team of experts will look at the adverse reports data, crunch the numbers to determine if the seizures are caused by the drug, discuss their findings, and decide whether the benefits of the drug outweigh the risks. If they judge the risks too great, they will stop sale of the drug.
I just don't think that a UL type consortium for pharmaceuticals would arise spontaneously. Testing household appliances and so forth is easy; trying to figure out a drug's effect on the human body, and whether it is safe is incredibly complicated. A drug like my hypothetical, that has a 1/10,000 chance of causing a seizure disorder manifesting several weeks after use, will be found to be perfectly safe during clinical trials. It takes post-marketing surveillance to reveal a problem this small.
The FDA arose because the market allowed for all kinds of quackery and abuse. The particular naivety of libertarians is that they seem to have fundamental beliefs that no one would ever commit fraud and that "the market" is omnisciently aware of every bad product. There is no evidence to support either belief.
Even with the FDA, drug companies always maintain sophisticated databases of their drugs and long term effects.
They do this because the FDA requires it.