This is historically untrue. When complex societies civil war, they tend to fall apart. (Wars of unification being an exception.) Their citizens’ living conditions permanently fell, often for generations, until an outside power subsumed them.
This trend looks to be strengthening as time goes on, probably on account of increasing species-wide firepower and mobility. Instead, peaceful (if politically violent) “revolutions” reboot the society from time to time. One could argue the Great Depression was the last such restructuring of the American system.
A better argument would be the case that American involvement in WWII resulted in a larger restructuring of American lives.
Women entering the workforce.
The U.S. military fighting racial segregation.
The resultant boomer generation and the rise of labor until 1980.
Lowered income inequality.
The GI bill providing affordable higher-ed to a broad swatch of the populace.
Just look at the crypto market and imagine if we all had to use those zany tokens to do things. We couldn't get anything done.
That used to exist back in the 1800's.
Our financial systems are very stable and far more resilient than we recognize. We take that for granted.
When is the last time depositors arbitrarily lost a pile of cash while not investing in risky things?
That's a 'new financial innovation' largely enabled by laws and oversight etc. that your great-great grandparents didn't have the luxury of having.
Societies can do "de-sprawling" of rules, but it isn't a frequent thing (the German civil code is kind of a reduction of lots of several codes into one, for example).
There is probably also an element of aging societies becoming more risk averse, hence more rules and regulations.
Edit: And WW2 saw another massive increase of the "state", so not sure war does generally shrink administrative systems.
As a winner, though, you face the task of trying to shrink an administrative system that just won a war.
They had a very small-scale civil war which made them rethink their political structure.
Or the Austrian empire in 1866, which lost a major war against Prussia and was forced to reform itself into a dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Which was somewhat more competitive and liberal than its predecessor and if it avoided other wars, it might in some form survive until today.
However if the present legislative burden is excessively oppressive, a war, revolution, or reconstitution might address same.
Your argument is a non sequitur.
(*) a quick read of a wikipedia article about the Japanese economic miracle - which undoubtedly you'll consider leftist propaganda - certainly confirms this. At best relaxing anti-monopoly laws was an example of legislation reform that helped further boost the already impressive recovery that had occurred during the 50s.
FWIW I would actually expect the fact that because the priority at the time was economic recovery before everything else, red tape wasn't allowed to get in the way to the degree it often seems to once prosperity had been restored. I'd even say that's probably a reasonable trade off, though it certainly doesn't justify governments letting growing businesses get away with whatever they feel like. Nobody likes bureaucracy or red tape, but almost always it's what we end up with as a result of repeated cases of corporate behaviour that's widely agreed to be unacceptable.
Leftists always mis-attribute the causes of prosperity. The wikipedia article cites causes that are commonplace in other countries that had no miracle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_economic_miracle
Leftist economies have never experienced an economic miracle in any country.
East Germany, for example (compared with West Germany).
But you haven't made any sort of case that the German or Japanese "miracles" were largely due to raw unrestrained capitalism. There are way too many factors that made those particular countries special cases at the time to pinpoint all the primary causes, let alone tease out various secondary factors some of which probably tempered rather than accelerated growth.
Edit: It's fine to make broad claims about free market and growth, but please provide some citations to back up sweeping statements (and also to allow to go deeper into definitions).
Communist economies always wind up facing famine.
Communist China, for example, switched from a communist economy to a free market one. Look at the results. Korea split in two, one communist, one free market. Which one prospered? East vs West Germany, same story.
The US tried central economic planning for gasoline in the 1970's (repealed by Reagan as his first EO). Disaster. The US tried central economic planning for airline routes, fares, and schedules up until Reagan ended that. The result was a huge increase in efficiency and low fares.
In the case of World War II, numerous governments were created from whole cloth following the war, amongst conquored territories, in newly-created states, and even amongst some of the winners.
Notably, Japan had a constitution imposed on it by the United States, which largely exists to the present day. Some traditional institutions were preserved (e.g., the emperor), but in almost entirely symbolic form. Germany likewise was reconstituted under a new government, as was Italy. Even France saw a new government formed (the Fifth Republic) in 1958. The states of the Eastern bloc were reconstituted under Communist rule as Soviet satellites. India, Indonesia, the Phillipines, and several Arabic states received independence. The state of Israel was formed. Much of Africa decolonised in the 1950s and 1960s.
There was of course some continuity through all of this, but in large part, new governments emerged and old laws were often voided.
Isn't the question not that laws etc. change but if there is true reduction of the total?
I started a company for a small project on Tuesday. It took me 30 minutes and I never left my chair.
Hire some employees, spread them across multiple states, find out the complexities of employment law in multiple states.
Start up a health plan, same thing.
There a million examples, none of them are bad by themselves, but every aspect of a multi employee business has rules and regulations that if you run afoul of, there are consequences. No one gives you a manual of these, you find them out along the way and it costs you money and time.
That’s life. It’s full of annoyances. Our forebearers had a lot more.
Paradoxically, starting your own business in the 'old time' way, i.e. plumbing or roofing contractors ... it's like guaranteed work for great income. Plumbers are the new Dentists.
That said, there are areas in which regulatory issues are obviously a problem.
This talk of 'war' is hyperbolic.