All of the slippery slope arguments you make have some validity. I just don't agree that fear of the slippery slope is sufficient reason to not try to fix what needs fixing.

The constant subtext is that free market capitalism is already perfect, and any attempt to improve it can only make it worse. On what real-world example of FMC do you base that conclusion? I believe you've conceded in the past that pure laissez-faire capitalism has problems that need a modicum of supervision to avoid, so I'd guess you're not talking about the pure form. So which adulterated form of FMC is the perfect form? Seems to me like you've already gone some ways down that slippery slope. We're out of the realm of absolutes already.

Specific examples of over-regulation? To some degree it's universal, just a natural consequence of the dynamic tensions that produce rough compromises in a democracy. The desire to tinker expands until it runs into sufficient opposition to stop it, and there's always a bit of overshoot. That's how the size of government expands naturally. As I noted earlier, I don't consider that a sign of a pathology, but rather the proper operation of a democracy. After two centuries, it's fair to say that we have just the amount of government that the people want.

I'm not trying to evade specific examples. Here's one: The massive intervention Republicans are advocating in the low end of the labor market, in the voluntary relationship between cheapskate employers and desparate undocumented immigrants. The situation as it is is a great example of a free market solution worked out over a long period without (and often despite) government interference. Yet Republicans are demanding an intervention that will increase labor costs at the low end of the economy, plus burden that labor with significant enforcement costs that, because they come from general tax funds, amounts to a subsidy. Thus allowing cheap employers to legally hire employees who will work for less than American citizens. Sounds like a lose-lose all around.

There are other similarly dramatic examples, such as our current "Drug War" and its ancestor Prohibition. There's the FCC, interfering in the entertainment market by deciding what sort of speech, and brief images of naked breasts, the public can and can't purchase. Zoning regulations that exist solely to maintain inflated housing prices not only distort that market, but because the regulations tend to discourage high-density housing, inflicts a hardship on lower income people.

It seems to me that Republicans are in favor of quite a lot of intervention in the free market. WHen it's your idea it's good, when it's somebody else's it's bad? I think not; it's just a matter of whose thumb gets to be on the scale. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.