> I'm not allowed to plug in an electrical strip at a trade show.
Perhaps because some sockets are one the same circuit and they don't want to overload that? (At best, risking a power outage because of a circuit breaker going off and at worse a fire if you happened to plug your electrical strip into another electrical strip)
> I'm not allowed to pick up an item sitting twenty feet away on the loading dock.
Perhaps because there may be active work or equipment moving around and you aren't wearing high viz and aren't communicating with someone operating heavy equipment?
These 2 things, though, aren't union related. 1 of them (the electrical strip) may not even be regulation related but rather simply that the organizer has had problems with this in the past. The why for these rules aren't exactly hard to imagine or understand.
> They make public transit too expensive
Public transit is expensive because we refuse to accept the notion of operating it at a loss. We are perfectly capable of partially or fully subsidizing public transit through taxes. In fact, we'd probably save money by running it completely off of taxes because we'd eliminate all the measures we take to ensure someone isn't riding for free. Someone hopping a ticket stand wouldn't jeopardize our ability to keep the trains running. We could further save the tax payers money by adding enough public transit to eliminate or severely reduce the need to purchase cars. Directly saving money on car mileage/purchases/insurance and indirectly saving money by the reduced climate impact and cleaner air (less lung cancer).
Some public services are worth taxes. We (usually) think that way about police, fireman, libraries, and public schools. Heck, we already think that way in terms of transport (most roads aren't built through usage fees).