Regulations are Crucial / Libertarianism is a Quaint Anachronism

Libertarianism is a quaint anachronism.

It's most applicable time was hundreds of years ago.

If you only interact with a dozen possible transactions (butcher, cobbler, farmer, soldier etc.) every individual can be expected to be expert enough to be vigilant of all the ways you can get screwed and thus inoculate and counter them.

But in the modern age there is such an exponentially more complicated division of labor that you can't expect "the free market" to work without regulation.

Take a guess how many companies (let alone individuals) your very life depends on every day? There are so many vendors and subcontractors in every car manufactured and any one of them could cut a corner and risk your life. If there weren't any regulations we wouldn't have seat belts or crash test safety features. There are so many ways you can die from tall buildings and poisoned medicine or spoiled food. No one person can remotely keep track of everything in modern America. We need to have faith in the safety of life just to function in such close proximity, vulnerable to literally millions of decisions every day.

This isn't the 17th century where you can know not to buy meat from Joseph because his shop is unsanitary and consequently Joseph goes out of business.

Let's use my favorite analogy - POKER. In the old times the players dealt the cards and while most were honest there were plenty of cheats. Now the casino has a dealer, pitboss and security cameras to ensure it's a fair and honest game. Consequently the number of cheats is a tiny fraction of what it used to be.

Good regulations only punish the bad guys. Good guys want to run an honest business that doesn't hurt others. Bad guys are always looking for a way to profit by screwing someone else. Good guys want to grow the pie and profit. Bad guys want to profit and don't care about the pie (but maybe even have a sadistic streak that predisposes them to shrinking the pie). All bad guys/criminals hate regulations.

That doesn't mean that everyone who hates regulation is a bad guy/criminal.
Well-meaning Libertarians hate regulations because they see the burden and don't appreciate the benefits (or the downside to not having regulations).
So lets focus our energy on crafting regulations that efficiently prevent bad actions.

We're talking about "where do you draw the line?" and "what's the best use of resources to achieve a given objective?"

If you explore the putative conservative Republican administration you'll see that their objectives, by nearly every verifiable measure, are contrary to the very foundation of American democracy.
And their strategies & tactics reveal their true priorities.