The US has in my opinion the exact wrong approach to regulation here. The deny-list approach of regulation may very well foster innovation, but it also fosters lawlessness and exploitation.
If a company can get away with not needing to really care about the negative side effects of their products, they will most certainly do that.
The deny-list model is fine if 1. You deny quickly and decisively, 2. Actually deny, without loopholes, grace periods, or grandfather clauses (which will all be abused) and 3. Actually enforce, rather than just throwing a law over the wall and ignoring violators.
The US is pretty slow with #1, absolutely terrible and ineffective with #2, and uneven/spotty with #3.
If we assume that those are the three conditions under which a deny-list model is fine, then I think the US' inability to meet those conditions more or less disqualify it from it being a fine choice.
> Modern technology wouldn’t exist if we had this philosophy 200 years ago
This is a really bad line of thinking - 200 years ago humanity was small and helpless. In year 1788 Britain, the centre of industrial revolution, produced 32,000 tons of iron. Today we produce billions. Our ships weigh more than all the fish in the ocean combined. The chickens we eat weigh more than all the wild animals left on the planet.
200 years ago we did not have the ability to create completely new synthetic chemicals that last thousands of years, today we have put so much plastic in the ocean, it will soon outweigh all the fish.
We didn't have to care about the planet because we couldn't break it- now we can
I do think you're right in sentiment; things would look very differently. If given a choice, I'd rather live in a slower-paced society where development was held to higher standards.
If a company can get away with not needing to really care about the negative side effects of their products, they will most certainly do that.
The entire model needs to be inverted.