You yourself just answered why regulation can't ever work correctly: "The real world is simply more complex than that." As a programmer you should know that ex

You yourself just answered why regulation can't ever work correctly: "The real world is simply more complex than that." As a programmer you should know that extremely complex systems like the world can not ever be managed by a small group of super clever beings. This has been the fallacy of each and every of "I'm smart you're not, I'll run things" philosophies originally invented by Plato and perfected by Marx. The world is a complex system managed by 6 billion autonomous beings. Together these 6 billion autonomous beings for an extremely smart mega intelligence. While you, I and our "leaders" may be smarter than the vast majority of these individuals. Together though is another story. I agree with your point about corruption as long as we assume the presence of a regulating entity. Corruption is essentially the markets way of calculating a price on overcoming social engineering. But without regulators in the first place it would not exist and would simply be just other transaction between two or more parties.