I tend to agree with your second paragraph, but this is a blog post and is clearly speculative; it's not an econ paper. To your first paragraph: AFAICT this is

I tend to agree with your second paragraph, but this is a blog post and is clearly speculative; it's not an econ paper. To your first paragraph: AFAICT this is a blog by the Progressive Policy Institute, which is a centrist Democratic think tank. I think they were just "blaming the regulatory state" in the sort of formal sense that they were saying there was lost productivity due to regulatory missteps; they weren't making an ideological screed about harmful regulation.