> But who regulates the regulators?
You and people like you talk as though the various regulatory bodies simply issue an edict and every corporation is obligated to oblige that very second, and it's ridiculous.
1. The regulations themselves are often based heavily upon opinions and trusted advice from people who actively are or who formerly were in the industry being regulated, not simply dreamed up and pulled from someone's ass
2. There is an entire months long process of discussion, meeting, decisions, appeals, revisions, etc. engaged in between experts on both sides, lawyers on both sides, etc. By the time a regulation becomes required law, it's likely been attended to by a few hundred if not thousand people from both private enterprise and Government over months if not YEARS of work.
3. Once a regulation becomes law, companies often have months of forewarning to get into compliance. In the event that a business is non-compliant with something, unless it's immediately life threatening, they are given warnings, written warnings, guidance, possible solutions, etc. Regulators are not some comic book villain trying to fuck over mom and pop stores. They are attempting to ensure the safety, efficiency, and long life of everyone involved in a business. They want you to be compliant, not to file paperwork and shut you down.
> As bad as this example is, have you never heard of the nightmares people fall into dealing with government bureaucracies?
Oh I have, and for years and years I took them at face value but ANECDOTE IS NOT EVIDENCE. Almost every time you hear about some person who ended up on the wrong end of a regulator's pen, if you start digging you'll find a long history of shady ass behavior from that person which is conveniently omitted from their account of the events, for I'm sure totally-not-lying reasons.
> Regulation isn't obviously positive just because there are reasons people trot out to justify it.
The vast majority of regulations are written in the blood of the people who had to die to show us that storing some chemical in a break room gave every 3rd employee cancer, or every person who ate fish from a polluted river who didn't know that the chemicals in it would destroy their bodies. The fact that you personally don't understand whatever is behind a given regulation, does not make it unimportant or frivolous.
> But neither does the Social Security Administration, the Department of Justice, my local police department, my local school board, or any post office in which I've ever found myself.
Except you can affect those if you get off your dead ass and vote.