But there are many kinds of regulation. Your brain, for example, is a regulator.
"Do" and "do not" may appear to restrict freedom while increasing it. Forbidding smoking on airplanes increases net freedom. And if the cravings become unpleasant enough that some smokers quit smoking, then this has lengthened lives and healthspans, which increases freedom. Of course, you are free to smoke, addict yourself, and limit your own freedom as you see fit. But you are not free to limit other people's freedom while limiting your own. When you smoke on an airplane, you make a choice for everyone on the plane without asking them. And so forbidding smoking "for" other people on an airplane (people who did not choose to smoke, nor would they) increases net freedom, without any doubt in the matter.
At the most basic level, once you get past "do" and "do not," the simplest kind of regulation is actually a thermostat. The principle of the thermostat is what allows your body and mind to operate so beautifully. Our genes are, yes, often "do" or "do not" signals, but also often thermostats. Homeostasis, a fundamental principle of life, is another way of talking about the thermostat - albeit many, interconnected. And so it's both sensible and revealing to look at every brain as a large, highly evolved tangle of electrochemical thermostats embodying regulations. Without those regulations, you would not exist to call yourself free.
So draw your own conclusions about how much you want to remove regulations and treat them as automatically a problem.
The drive to keep legal regulations concise and intuitive is a solid one (people cannot intentionally follow rules they do not know, remember, or understand), but it should really attend to individuals before it attends to businesses. Businesses can fail and reform without loss of individual life. No individual comes back from the grave. Protect individuals well, and you also protect business. Protect businesses in a way that seems well at first, and you may end up undermining individuals and businesses both.
