Bowz, where I might differ with you is that I believe you are a lot more like TB than you think! Like him, what you say has some truth, but is probably extrapolated past the point of realism.

Regulation is instigated to solve a very real problem, usually dangerous or unfair practices by business. But it also has a tendency to stick around longer than it needs to, fails to adapt to the times, and develops a life of its own, usually because it generates constituencies
(in both government and business) to prolong it or make it worse.

The solution is to neither eliminate it, or increase it, but to review it periodically and bring it up to date. Unfortunately, as you point out, powerful interests usually adapt to regulation in ways that are very profitable, and they lobby vigorously against reform, or lobby vigorously for abandoning all regulation altogether. It is very cynical to single out an example of poor, ineffective, or even unjust regulation and use it as an excuse to eliminate all regulation altogether and essentially, let businessmen do whatever they damn well please.

These interests are neither fully governmental, as TB implies, or totally private, as you do. They are a combination of the two, not because they are conspiring together in seedy backroom deals, but because they are both following their own careerist path of least resistance.

After all, everybody agrees the tax laws are ridiculous, but there are those who get rich off their loophole, and others, like lobbyists, accountants and lawyers, who get rich off the complexity itself.

The Libertarians tell us the way to do this is to break up the cozy relationship between business and the bureaucracy. What they never tell you is just how they're going to do that. Crony Capitalism is usually fully justified on constitutional, legal, and today, ideological grounds; the politicians on their payroll have seen to that.

As the society becomes more complex, the amount of inefficiency and friction increases. Like all complex systems, the more complex they are, the more a proportion of their resources must be devoted to maintenance. Bad law and regulation is part of the price we pay for the good law and regulation we enjoy that makes modern life tolerable.

It's like organized crime. All democracies have gangsters, because the only way you can fully defeat the mob is with violent countermeasures. The criminals will take advantage of the the law and democratic procedure to protect themselves. Without civil and constitutional safeguards, it is easy to crush organized crime, when you add law, courts and freedom, they slip through the cracks. Its a lot harder to fight crime when you actually have to prove it in court, and if you have to do that, some criminals will get away with it. Its part of the price we pay for freedom.