I'm not very into any 1 ism myself, but I've studied enough to realize that there are pointed differences between corporatism and capitalism. The Pauls seem to be capitalists. Many others who claim to be capitalists are corporatists.
Regulation is what requires corporations to dispose of pollutants properly instead of just dumping them in rivers.
Regulation is what requires corporations to give workers proper safety warnings, equipment and training rather than just putting them in harm's way.
Regulation is what requires corporations to disclose their accounting to investors instead of telling them whatever they want.
Regulation is what requires corporations to pay full time workers overtime, give breaks and sick time, and just generally treat them like human beings.
Regulation is for corporations what criminal law is for individuals.
It's what prevents the worst of us from behaving as badly as they would otherwise.
Not all regulation is automatically good, just like not all criminal laws are automatically good. But there is a reason it exists, and it has an important role to play.
Another example is Bell Systems("Ma Bell")'s stifling of innovation as they held a government-sanctioned monopoly over telephone service via the Communications Act of 1934. Ma Bell would have had no reason to build you an iPhone as they had the market cornered.
Just because there's been bad regulation doesn't mean you get rid of all of it, just like you wouldn't get rid of all criminal laws just because the system has been abused in the past.
REGULATION = GOOD REGULATION + BAD REGULATION
Arguing against "regulation" means arguing against the good and the bad. Which is the height of stupidity since you're effectively arguing for companies to do whatever they want, whenever they want with zero consideration of anybody else.
Regulation allows Company A to influence the government to implement regulation that favours Company A and hinders Company B or individuals X.
Now perhaps regulation is required to a certain extent (especially with regards to the environment) but many of the potential issues are already covered by criminal law. What is certain is that without regulation, corporatism would become very difficult.
"Regulation" doesn't allow Company A to influence the government, the First Amendment allows Company A to influence the government. In your statement, regulation is the effect, not the cause.
Depends on the content of the regulation. Regulation that gives particular companies special voices on public policy does, in fact, give "Company A" a special ability to influence the government to implement policy in a way detrimental to competing "Company B" that is not granted a similar voice. There's quite a lot of regulation that does this in one form or another (usually, with safeguards that notionally serve to avoid abuse, but there is plenty of room for debate about how well those safeguards work.)
Actually, regulation prevents consumers from making choices with their investment decisions. By putting publicly traded companies in a special class, and only allowing individuals to invest in those companies, they vastly limit choice.
Regulation is what requires corporations to pay full time workers overtime, give breaks and sick time, and just generally treat them like human beings.
In America this is the case, however, over the whole world there is a relatively free market. For competitive job marekets/professions where is necessary to pay workers overtime and give them sick leave to continue employment, those benefits are given. Across the whole world, those benefits aren't necessary to hire some professions, jobs for those professions leave the US.
In theory regulation would protect us from predatory industries, in practice we often suffer from regulatory capture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture.
Some recent libertarian deregulation success stories:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Savar_building_collapse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Thane_building_collapse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Pakistan_garment_factory_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Dhaka_fire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_explos...