About 1 percent of us work on farms and all of us eat food produced by people we don’t know working for companies that are organized to achieve financial profit. In a world of growing technological complexity, the average person is in no position to understand, evaluate and prevent the potential dangers they might face. Opponents of New York City’s police practice of stop, question and frisk did not favor deregulation of the rules of weapon possession, they objected to the method the NYPD used to enforce those rules. A secondary issue relates to the method and style of regulation. The issue of deregulation is not one of freedom versus tyranny, but simply how many rules we need and what behaviors we need protection from. Only anarchists oppose all rules and it is difficult to find any pure anarchists.
Without it, we must all protect ourselves in a war of all against all. Rules and their enforcement are a requirement of civilization. Cops inspect behavior for illegality and when they find it, turn it over to courts for adjudication. Regulation is simply another word for policing. This trend did not start under President Donald Trump but has picked up momentum and increased legitimacy since his inauguration. From unsafe Boeing 737 Max jets to exploding chemical plants in Houston, we are seeing some visible and dramatic impacts of decades of deregulation.