If you’re just counting “number of rules on the books”. You could easily imagine a flipped situation where people were trying to add regulation to get the same

If you’re just counting “number of rules on the books”. You could easily imagine a flipped situation where people were trying to add regulation to get the same final effect. I suspect most people think more holistically about regulation than that. Being afraid of being sued and the results of those of those cases being enforced by the government certainly could be interpreted as “bigger government”/more regulation.