I once maintained that Senate Republicans on the Banking committee supported a complex regulatory regime because their influence and status derived from the val

I once maintained that Senate Republicans on the Banking committee supported a complex regulatory regime because their influence and status derived from the value they provided helping banks navigate that regulatory apparatus. My left-wing friends regarded this as the most cynical thing they'd ever heard, but they didn't have much evidence or analysis against it. Politicians want a powerful state because their power derives from their influence over that state. They want their power to grow because no one is ever satisfied with what they have. If the US has a Serratta, it would be in the impossibility of doing business without managing political relations, and thus the exclusion of people with serious interests from any serious effort to reform the state. I'm not sure we're there yet, but if we aren't we're dangerously close.