The more established, bigger, unethical companies will crush the "our products don't poison you!" competitors out of existence before they even get started. They will maintain their poison-happy monopolies. So without regulation protecting anti-poison competition, there will be no money in these alternatives, and the economy will remain unbalanced and literally deadly.
For those interested, in the outdoors industry (where fluorinated compounds are pervasive in waterproof coatings), there are a couple companies doing good:
Patagonia has switched to shorter-chain PFCs for many of its coatings (C6 instead of C8). They are also actively investing in research for alternative chemicals with adequate performance.
Nikwax, which sells re-waterproofing products, never uses fluorinated compounds and is a good brand to look for at the store.
> They will maintain their poison-happy monopolies.
They will because people will still buy their crap. There are plenty of lazy, misinformed, ignorant people who would do anything to keep happy-poisoning themselves, including fighting legislation meant to protect them.
Oh, I'm decidedly pro-regulation. I was just answering the argument that the economy suffers under regulations, which I don't think is a given at all.
Existing businesses might go belly up, but new ones will spring up to fill the post-regulation needs, and as long as there are businesses doing stuff the economy will grow.
There is much less evidence that the economy suffers under regulations than the opposite. Just look at California, for instance.
>The more established, bigger, unethical companies will crush the "our products don't poison you!" competitors out of existence before they even get started.
And then they'll eat their babies. More realistically though they'll try to buy these companies to get their talent and patents. So in the end you banned the poisonous stuff, people who innovated made a lot of money and everybody's better off.
Maybe my hypothesis is overly optimistic but yours is comically grim. Do you think that we shouldn't have banned asbestos or leaded paints? That's exactly the kind of completely dogmatic rant I complained about in my sibling comment. "Things don't work perfectly all the time so let's do absolutely nothing".
