while I agree that regulation should be intensely scrutinized, and that the implications of a piece of regulation are usually not fully understood until after it has been implemented, the idea that the majority of regulation is "bad" is myopic.
Well-written regulation (and I would argue that the majority of regulations in the US are well-written) serves the public interest. Two immediate examples that come to mindt are the Glass-Steagall act, which separated commercial banking from speculative trading until it was repealed by GLB in the 80s (opening the door for the financial crisis) and the FDA. I would prefer to live in a country where glass stegall was still in place and the FDA was even stronger than it is today.
