Swingman wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:
This is kind of a naive view. It fails in two ways, one because it ignores the reality of monopolies and collusion (so that it's not always possible to "take one's business elsewhere"); and the other because a business's profit motive generally doesn't align with the public's desire for a clean and safe environment.
In an ideal world, regulation would exist only in so far as is necessary to provide "an even playing field", where competing businesses all had the same safety and enviromental standards (so none had an advantage), and all truely did compete (so the customer had a fair choice). In practice, governments are not very good at identifying those boundries, and inertia tends to keep regulations in place long after the need for them has passed (by the same token, inertia tends to prevent regulation being put in place until well after the need first appears - something of a closing the barn door after the horse has left effect).
Anyone interested in the subject would be well advised to study the history of railroad regulation (since that was the first industry regulated) from the creation of the ICC to the Staggers act of 1980 that deregulated it (about 30 years after the need for regulation had ended).
John