At some level, every regulation represents a loss of freedom. By definition we are no longer free (if we wish to remain law-abiding citizens) to engage in the behavior being regulated. Fair enough.
But this loss of freedom often has an increase in freedom that is far greater. If it didn't, it's very unlikely a free people would have chosen, through their freely elected government, to create the law including the regulations in the first place. Sometimes government overreaches, or laws passed don't work as well in reality as they did in theory (Prohibition comes to mind), but we have a process for that too.
Let's think about a recent example, FDIC. I read an article just months before the financial crisis by a very intelligent-sounding economist (there are a few) who advocated abolishing FDIC since the compulsory insurance scheme was insuring an event that had not happened since the 1930s - bank failures. Better to return the pennies companies are forced to pay to the smartest guys in the room - you know, the ones at Citigroup and Lehman and AIG - because they would know better what to do with that money than a bunch of fuddy-duddy government regulators.
Thank god that advice was not taken. The Black Swan arrived in force, and of all the fall-out from the financial crisis we did not have to endure was the spectacle of people lining up in the hope (usually forlorn) of getting their savings returned to them because they happened to do business at the "wrong" bank. Yes, banks are forced under FDIC to pay into the system. And yes, those costs are passed onto us and if we want to bank, we must pay them. So we lost this freedom all those years. But we were free from having to pore over the financial statements of every bank (and hoping those statements are accurate and honest) before opening a checking account. The net effect is MORE freedom to live your life, knowing your bank can do many bad things, but steal your deposits through recklessness or mismanagement is not one of them.
Similarly, regulations that mandate coal mining companies have functioning carbon monoxide detectors (and don't disable them) may decrease the freedom of mine operators NOT to do this and force them to spend money that might be returned to shareholders or corporate executives on compulsory technology to save their workers, but if we weigh the freedom to receive an extra penny-a-share dividend versus the freedom of a few hundred miners to know they are not working in a death trap, does the former even come close to the latter? Putting even a million dollars value of one lost miner's life would offset centuries of compliance with this regulation, so the net economic effect is MORE freedom, not less.
Regulations that say you have to leash your dog means my children are free to play in the park without getting mauled by a pit bull. Yes, having to invest in a leash and use it is a loss of freedom, but it has to be offset against many hours of plastic surgery reconstructing a child's face. One emergency room visit for multiple lacerations and crush injuries would pay for millions of leashes.
In a free society it's unlikely, probably impossible, that any of us will agree with all regulations, some will even be costly, unreasonable, or annoying, but this does not prove either that all regulations are always bad or that we are living in the Third Reich.
And speaking of which, to my friends in the Tea Party, please give the Holocaust analogies a rest. Forcing people to insure their children is not the same as forcing them to watch their children get tortured or executed. Putting people into a federalized risk pool so that insurance companies can offer policies with lower premiums benefiting from economies of scale is not the moral equivalent of putting them in Dachau. Saying that regulating an otherwise "free" market in healthcare (in which insurance companies are free to charge us and pay themselves whatever they like but we are not free (if we are responsible citizens) to free ride on the anticipated generosity of the local emergency room) or anywhere is the same as putting someone in a camp or torturing or killing them insults the millions of people who really suffered those things. Can we all agree on this?
If universal healthcare really were a well-paved road to some communist hellhole why is it that those who arguably know the most about living in a communist hellhole - namely the Eastern Europeans who liberated themselves in 1989 - all passed universal healthcare in their new democratic governments without anyone ever equating them with the former regime? Why do we let Palin, a person who didn't own a passport until a few years ago, get away with these sorts of nonsensical comparisons that those who actually lived through the terrors she uses as a political punchline disagree with her on?
A final analogy: I have broken the law. I got a speeding ticket years ago. Charles Manson broke the law. He murdered many people. Charles Manson and I are therefore both law-breakers. But this observation is beyond meaningless. The idea that a speeding ticket is a slippery slope to Helter Skelter is about as plausible as the idea that forcing free riders to pay their fair share will lead inevitably to Auschwitz or the gulag archipelago (take your pick, they've both been used).
Hopefully, we can all take a deep breath, stop talking about government takeovers no one is proposing, death panels that don't exist, or an omniscient free market that magically allocates all resources at all times in the most efficient way..
The gubment isn't evil, Obama is more American than I am (I am a naturalized US citizen), and yes, we really walked on the moon (I'm pretty sure about that last one). I don't know if the right level of federal spending is 20% or 15% or 25%, but it's probably not 5%, not in an advanced economy, the largest in the world, one the founders never could have envisioned.
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