A very similar play is used by corporations who lobby the government for more regulations. Big oil is famous for this, they lobby the Government to institute ne

A very similar play is used by corporations who lobby the government for more regulations. Big oil is famous for this, they lobby the Government to institute new licensing, fees, programs, carbon taxes, new environmental assessments, etc. You might wonder why would an oil company like Exxon or Shell, etc lobby for things that will end up costing them 10's of millions? It's because these 10's of millions in cost are trivial for them. The smaller players get killed, they don't have the same amount of resources like teams of lawyers or billions of dollars and end up struggling to stay in the game. It plays out like this all the time.