Economic regulation: coercive rule by political appointees vs. freely negotiated prices

"[ M ] ost people hold, explicitly or implicitly, that without regulation, markets could, and sometimes would, spin off into disastrous excesses of one form or another. "The operative image of economic regulation is that of a huge truck without steering or brakes. 'We have to have those instruments of control, or the truck will go careening off the side of a cliff.' "The truth is that government…