Regulation operates like a ratchet - it's easy to add, but hard to remove, both due to the lobbying/entrenched interests that benefit from it, and the optics of

Regulation operates like a ratchet - it's easy to add, but hard to remove, both due to the lobbying/entrenched interests that benefit from it, and the optics of one obscure accident blown out of proportion after some safety rule is removed. Not even getting to the PR and corruption aspects when it's first introduced - I mean, look at congress under either party. I think that should be the default assumption; that a given regulation was added because of corruption and PR. There needs to be rigorous explanation on why it's needed; frankly if I could go back in time and magically change the Constitution in some way I'd try to engineer a practical sunset rule that would require all laws and regulations on all levels to expire in a few years and be re-voted-upon (the part where re-voting on many laws might prevent adding more laws is by design). I feel like there's some sort of a trade-off bias involved here - like when people mistakenly assume that if someone is smart they are not sociable or if someone is beautiful they must be dumb. Most countries are capable of building stuff cheaper, with less rules and far less workers (the latter even applies in Europe). "Oh well but it's less safe". But is it? Does anyone measure that? The buildings and bridges in China don't appear to fall down any more often than in the USA.