OTOH too little regulation can easily mean no-one trusting a brand they don't recognize as large and well-established to even reach the standard of not killing

OTOH too little regulation can easily mean no-one trusting a brand they don't recognize as large and well-established to even reach the standard of not killing them, let alone being any good. Personally I'm already there with lots of stuff. I'm aware that it's letting certain companies collect rents, but it's generally not worth my time and the extra risk to track down another brand that might be acceptably reliable and safe, assuming they haven't decided to burn whatever little reputation they've built up for some short-term profit by swapping their once-decent product for crap while keeping the price and model info the same after all the reviews I read were written. That's also a barrier to entry. Economies are tricky things :-/