I thought about touching on those laws in my comment, but I cut that bit for the sake of brevity. I did touch on it there: while the existing massive corporations in this market may be able to afford to pay the costs out of pocket, one should not expect smaller, newer entrants to that market to have such deep pockets. So for a free market to function, there must be systems in place to counter that issue. I'd overlooked the idea of mandatory insurance (foolishly); I'll say a bit about that in a response to your post.
The other reason those laws exist, of course, is that corporations argued that without some sort of guarantee along those lines the costs of doing business would be too unpredictable and investors would not back them at all. So (to oversimplify a complex situation) the corporations agreed to submit to government oversight of their operations in exchange for the government "insurance" that they viewed as necessary in order for their business to be viable in the first place.
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The other reason those laws exist, of course, is that corporations argued that without some sort of guarantee along those lines the costs of doing business would be too unpredictable and investors would not back them at all. So (to oversimplify a complex situation) the corporations agreed to submit to government oversight of their operations in exchange for the government "insurance" that they viewed as necessary in order for their business to be viable in the first place.