Yeah, maybe that was a bad example, I just meant that the government has certain goals for society and uses regulation to steer the market towards meeting them.

Yeah, maybe that was a bad example, I just meant that the government has certain goals for society and uses regulation to steer the market towards meeting them. Historically, that stuff was put in place for factory workers in the industrial revolution I presume, though I'm very fuzzy on that. I'd argue good living conditions for low level workers help create a strong middle class through upward social mobility, but that's going off on a tangent perhaps.