> So? The system isn't perfect. That doesn't help in deciding whether more or less regulation is better.
The entire concept of "more or less regulation" is partisan ideology. Every regulation has a cost and a benefit. Good regulations have benefits in excess of their costs.
The problem is that calculating the cost is very difficult. You may have a regulation that increases costs by $10 and produces a $12 benefit. But if the $10 cost increase drives a competitor out of business and allows the remaining provider to raise prices by $20 in total, you're now paying $20 for a $12 benefit.
They also have opportunity costs. You may have a regulation that consumes $20 of a $30 surplus but produces $50 in diffuse positive externalities, which sounds like a good idea. But if there is an alternative that also consumes $20 of the same $30 surplus and produces $500 in positive externalities, you can't have both ($40 > $30) and enacting the first one is really destroying $450 in benefits relative to the second. Trying to enact both is even worse, because then you get neither one and even destroy any benefits inherent in the original transaction.
It's so easy to screw this up that it's better to err on the side of not regulating something than to convince yourself you gained $30 when you really destroyed $1000.
The regulations you want are the ones that have unambiguous, huge net benefits, like prohibiting people from dumping toxic waste in the river, because the cost is low and the benefit is enormous. But even then you have to be careful, because if you're spending $50,000 to prevent $50,000,000 in harm, you could still be wasting $40,000 because there is a way to do it for $10,000.
And the incentives are wrong for people to carefully evaluate things like this, because the people paying the cost aren't the people creating the rules.
Which means "all regulation is bad" is false but "any given regulation is bad" is a solid heuristic.