. Some regulations should create socially useful “inefficiencies” e.g. requiring safety features, or including costs that both sides of transactions have incentives to disregard. If “efficiency” is the only goal, why not permit voluntary child labor (like this deadly silo cleaning)? 6. Regulation resisters have three kinds of motives: principled, easier-for-me, and exploitative. 7. Resisters-on-principle are freedom lovers. But should we be free to choose which side of the road to drive on? Some limits, like “rules of the road,” effectively enhance freedom, and abstract “freedom” must work with other goals, like safety. 8. Easier-for-me resisters want to avoid inconveniences. But they’re often blind to their own imprudence. Regulations can protect them (and us) from themselves. 9. Exploiters seek profit in laxer rules (e.g. lower pollution fixing costs). Regulations help deter and punish exploiters who are tempted by bad deeds, just as laws do with would-be criminals. Even if few are exploiters, easier-for-me resisters can abet them. 10. By all means, eliminate regulations that don't advance civic goals. But don’t promote imprudence or abet the unscrupulous. Regulations aren’t about the good guys (though their absence can push good guys into race-to-the-bottom competitions against malefactors). Calling regulations burdensome, or dumb, or corrupt is an argument for better management of regulators, not for abandoning what only regulations can do. - bigthink.com