but any individual bureaucrat has an unlimited incentive to say no. Regulators have no career motive to do any sort of cost-benefit calculation - except of course for the easy career-benefit calculation. A product with a failure mode spectacular enough to make the newspapers will be banned regardless of what other good it might do; one-reason decisionmaking.

That ignores how the FDA actually works in practice. A lot of regulators go into privat sector jobs after being at the FDA. Being nice to corporation is the way to get a high paying private sector job after being at the FDA.

Take a look at the Ranbaxy scandal. If you look at what the FDA actually does in the real world there plenty of reasons to criticise it that don't have anything to do with being pro or against regulation.