But we aren't moving in the direction of less regulation. Take a step back and look at the big picture and it's obvious. The size and scope of the State, and the amount of red-tape and regulation, is pretty much always growing in general.
What all these anti free-market people are missing (intentionally or not) is that it makes no sense to watch the State create 20000 pages of regulations, and then yell "de-regulation" when they remove 7 of those pages. Especially when 4 years later they turn around and add another 3377292751 pages of regulation and the cycle repeats itself.
> Take a step back and look at the big picture and it's obvious.
If you think that it's obvious, you clearly don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about.
> it makes no sense to watch the State create 20000 pages of regulations, and then yell "de-regulation" when they remove 7 of those pages.
It makes no sense to use number of pages as a proxy for regulation (either for or against). You measure regulation by watching the big players exploit loopholes. The market allows all sorts of well-known varieties of cheating by default. Are the well-known traditional types of cheating still being used effectively?
Yep. Therefore they lack appropriate regulations. That's what we mean when we say "deregulation." We don't mean "the number of pages on the law books is decreasing, clearly we must increase it because more pages are better." That's a straw man, and you do everyone (yourself included) a disservice by invoking it.
What all these anti free-market people are missing (intentionally or not) is that it makes no sense to watch the State create 20000 pages of regulations, and then yell "de-regulation" when they remove 7 of those pages. Especially when 4 years later they turn around and add another 3377292751 pages of regulation and the cycle repeats itself.