The difference is I don’t take the presence of corruption in many regulatory bodies to mean that regulation itself is bad in principle. I think that there are many things that will always require regulation, and though I’d certainly like to see that regulation function better than it does in many ways currently, it seems clear to me that some sort of regulatory mechanism will always be necessary – as in, some form of democratic process whereby a populace can create and enforce rules about things that effect everyone.

The FCC may be corrupt, but I still can’t envision an efficient modern society that doesn’t have a means of, for example, allocating radio spectrum — nor can I envision a way that could happen equitably and with maximum benefit if it was controlled entirely by private entities. The FDA may be corrupt, but I still can’t envision a modern industrial food chain that effectively feeds hundreds of million people without some sort of public health control, or a modern health care system that doesn’t involve some sort of public monitoring of pharmaceuticals. I can’t envision a modern city that doesn’t require public regulation of things like traffic, sewage, and zoning — and more broadly I can’t envision modern humanity’s long-term survival on the planet without some form of environmental and resource regulation.

I have no problem with you saying you think the majority of regulation is bad — though “majority” doesn’t mean a whole lot here, as regulation is not just directly quantifiable on some simple scale, considering that tiny pieces of regulation can often have widespread effects and hundred-page-long regulations can often prove impotent and ineffective.

What I fail to follow, though, is the logic of the leap from there to assuming that “regulation” is a concept is thus inherently problematic. Speaking realistically, we have no examples of a wholly regulated or wholly unregulated society – every society everywhere has existed with both, and each has numerous examples of both good and bad things caused by both regulation and a lack of regulation, plus even more examples where the exact causation is debatable and involves a wide variety of unique or specific factors.

The only sensible conclusion I can see is to focus on creating smart, effective, efficient regulation applied where necessary, and minimizing the negative consequences of both bad regulation and lack-of-necessary-regulation where those exist.