Many people are enamored of the idea of deregulation as a way to counter the growth of government and the perception that government is wasteful, intrusive, and inefficient. Deregulation was touted as a cure-all for Big Government during the Reagan administration, though one of the major acts of deregulation took place prior to that during the Carter administration with deregulation of the airline industry. Deregulation has also been instituted for other industries, such as finance and communications, and it has been found not to work as intended. In the deregulated environment, the consumer feels less protected and less safe. What may have been intended as a means of simplifying the business environment usually complicates it, as has happened with deregulation of the communications industries, and the consumer is left feeling confused by the change.
Regulation typically refers to governmental efforts to control individual price, output, or product quality decisions of private firms in an effort to prevent purely private decision-making that would take inadequate account of the public interest. The first modern regulatory agency was established by Congress in 1887--the Interstate Commerce Commission--to control railroad rates. by the 1960s, government regulation was commonplace in the transportation, communications, and utility industries, and federal or state regulatory bodies exercised control over trucking, airlines, telephone services, electricity, radio, television, and natural gas, and the federal government regulated the safety of products or production methods in the transportation, food, and drug industries and also regulated banks and issues of securities to protect depositors and investors. The scope of regulation increased when the government started to regulate oil prices, imposed contort on environmental pollution, and regulated the safety of the workplace, on the highway, and of consumer products (Breyer, 1990...