There is an economic school of thought that believes that all government regulation is an impediment to markets. Markets are thought to be in their most perfect state when unfettered by any external interference or restraints. They are naturally self-ordering because of the dominance of a inherently reasonable goodness in the market participants. As this has been popularized there are many who mouth its slogans without serious thought about the assumptions and implications of those assumptions.
The other primary argument seems to be that since regulations are not perfectly sufficient by themselves without any additional effort then we ought to get rid of them. This is of course a logical fallacy since nothing in the real world is perfect and sufficient in itself without tending. Structures in the physical world tend to weaken and decay over time, requiring renewal, refreshment, endorsement, upholding.
Unfettered or free marketism is a modern variant of the 18th century cult of primitivism and the noble savage; mankind is perfect and most effective in its natural state, unspoiled by laws or civilization. It is a proper cult, because the same notion, when logically applied to any other system of interactions and transactions, is quickly seen to be patently absurd and unworkable. We offer the example of a football game, a traffic interchange, a cocktail party.
To say that some regulation is a necessary good does not imply that a surfeit of regulation is optimal. This is another cult called 'statism.' It is this extreme of over-regulation that is used to promote extreme deregulation for its own sake by the free marketists. Cults tend to be infested with cultish minds, reasoning from one extreme to the other, always and everywhere creating inefficient and untractable problems.
Certainly law and regulation can be abused, misused, overdone. But merely cutting regulations down to free the native economy can have unexpected consequences, even towards those who promote mass deregulation to achieve their personal ends.
Sir Thomas More: What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?
This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast... And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?
Robert Bolt: A Man for All Seasons
