Regulations can be good, or bad, depending often times on ones point of view. For instance, a regulation preventing the emission of Coal Ash is bad for the Coal industry, but is good for another group of people, namely those wishing to breathe. But this regulation is one I've seen attacked, claiming it makes us less competitive. Last time I checked, breathing is a fairly popular thing to support.
So why is this regulation attacked? Because it costs money from industries. One of the court legal decisions in the 1920's (The Dodge Brothers vs Ford Motor Company) makes Corporations have to focus on improvement of stock value, over and above all else. This has been interpreted over the years to mean that if a Corporation does not actively try and fight against regulation which harms the bottom line, they are in violation of the law. This includes even if the regulation keeps its own customers alive. Same reason why the fight to eliminate Lead restriction still is out there, or to allow DDT to be used again, despite them both being known cancer causing elements.
Now, is this true of all Regulations? Not at all. Some Regulations do have less common sense. For instance, a Regulation in the 1960's once required all typewriters used by the Department of Defense had to include "A three letter logo of (particular font and size)". This was put in by lobbyists of International Business Machines to lock-in the DoD contract. Instead what it did was get their competitors to all adopt a similar naming system, from DEC, CDC, and OKI all popped up. But this is an example of another form of Regulation, the monopolist Regulation, where a company uses it's influence to lock out competition through regulatory restrictions. Some of them are easier to bypass than others, obviously.
A Liberal viewpoint is that the former regulations bring more benefit than harm, as if we did not utilize them then corporations would have unfettered ability to do things which directly harmed the people of the United States. The viewpoint also frowns on the latter, for it harms Capitalism through artificial barriers, an artificial monopoly.
Also, there is the other form of Regulation, the non-Regulation Regulation. There is another way to Regulate not often taken advantage of, the carrot-and-stick taxation approach to Regulation. Some Regulations work better than others in this manner. It is simple to implement, but it does require a higher tax rate to be effective. In short, you have a high business tax rate, that is the stick, but then have deductions for good behavior, which is the carrot. This form of Regulation works well with the current Corporate environment, where maximizing stock value is of utmost concern.
In addition, a corporate death penalty needs to be reinforced. It exists on paper, but has not been enforced for decades. In short, if a business engages in repeated behavior which endangers the public, or kills people through it's negligence, the business is "killed" and it's assets seized in order to utilize them for restitution. This wipes out the executives and stockholders immediately, their penalty for failing to obey the law and run a business which is ethical. For instance, the BP oil spill, which was caused through BP's repeated decades-long ignoring of regulations, would result in BP's american branch being shut-down, and all assets sold off. You only need to do this once, every few decades, and all Corporations fall in line. To do otherwise for them is to invite stockholder revolts, something no Executive can risk. This must be paired with strengthening individual Stockholder rights while diminishing corporate stockholder rights. A person can decide, a piece of paper (all a Corporation is if you think about it) cannot.
Well, that is my little dissection of regulation anyways.
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