...is that most regulation starts off as a great idea to mitigate a clear injustice. But in a democracy, especially one where lawmakers can be influenced by campaign contributions from rich merchants, the lawyers get to work.

I don't know about European robber barons, but American ones have proven themselves to be incredibly adept at weaseling their way around regulations, exploiting exceptions, gaming the law, and making the whole damned system so complex that only large firms with batallions of lawyers and accountants are able to function, which suits them fine because it puts their smaller, more efficient competition out of business.

And then, they have the audacity to complain the regulations (and the tax laws) are too complex and not really fair. Well, DUHHHH. Well, how did it get that way? It wasn't the bureaucrats, they'd much rather collect their 20% right off the top. And you will note none of this chicanery can be diminished by a free market. It has nothing to do with freedom of choice by consumers. Robber barons NEED government.

Of course, it would be great if a benevolent dictator could just study the situation and pass a decree, but dictators don't often come benevolent, any more than bureaucrats or robber barons, or lawyers or politicians either. We live in a democracy, and it just ain't going to run smoothly as long as people, and firms, have agendas that don't include the collective good. It's one of the prices we pay for democracy.

And it isn't just evil entrepreneurs that are at fault, even publicly owned corporations run by paid professionals are forced to operate in such a way that maximizes their stockholder's returns, and the stockholders themselves are not people, but still other souless collectives. It's built into the psychology of great organizations. And of course, the more complex our society gets, the harder it gets to go back to the bucolic 18th century.

Our government/business can no more go back to the post-colonial America idealized by our libertarians than ourt technological/industrial society can revert to the pastoral simplicity idealized by our environmentalists.