[woodruffw]

> The phrase "regulation" implies that the regulators--the State--are ethical actors.

Why would it imply this? Regulation is a political object, not a moral one. Regulation can be good or bad (as evaluated by a moral system, dealer's choice) without collapsing in on itself.

Political systems thrive for reasons that are mostly orthogonal to their moral nature, chief among them being whether their individual institutions survive administrations and the people within them. Trust is a function of the perseverance of those institutions when they are also perceived as good; it has nothing to do with globalism or localism.