The Role of Government Regulation

 Over the last year or so the role of government regulation has been in the headlines:

• Boeing's 737-Max suffered two fatal crashes. The conventional wisdom now is that FAA failed to exert enough oversight of the process of redoing the 737 into the Max.
• The development of vaccines for Covid-19 has been controversial.  Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen  at Marginal Revolution in particular have pushed for faster approval and looser regulation of the various vaccines. The FDA's process has been contrasted against the process in other countries.  Alex, I think, has come out for reciprocal approval--approval by the regulatory authority in any (big, developed) country should be enough for FDA.
• The Trump administration pulled back on various regulations.  Today's Post  says the changes in inspection of pork processing plants have lead to more contamination in the ultimate products.

I always remember the thalidomide problem when the Republicans start pushing looser regulations.

Having said that, I wonder whether in the process of redoing the regulations which were undone in the last 4 years the Biden administration will find some things which should be changed.  I think anything a group does is going to have some flaws. In the usual course of events it's often easier to work around the flaws than to change them. But since the Biden people will have to go through the regulation process anyway, there's no added cost to fix problems.

IMO there's often a fine line between not enough regulation and too much, so a feasible solution can be an alternation between the two.