Is it really accurate to call things “arbitrary”? Usually if you look at any safeguard you’ll find a real historical problem it was designed to reduce. Sometimes that’s something best solved otherwise – the drug war provides many examples of that - but I’d usually describe those as ineffective rather than arbitrary.

The distinction matters because it raises the question of that process repeating again. Since it’s not random, the same forces will push in the same direction unless those problems can be recognized and countered in a different means.

I think an outcome that could have gone another way but for some random historical circumstance counts as arbitrary.

For instance, do you think our regulatory framework would look the same today had Prohibition not happened? That's a case where the State created a problem (black market funding large scale organized crime) and then added yet more rules to try and fix that problem.

Edit: so one could argue that we "need" those regulations because of crime, but another could say if we eliminate the prohibitions funding those crime syndicates, then the problem is equally solved. Doesn't that make those regulations kind of arbitrary?

The common definition of “arbitrary” has a connotation of randomness to it. My point was that this isn't random but directed, and that if you don't understand who those rules serve you'll just end up repeating it in a different form or having the old rule adapted for new purposes, similar to how various measures originally intended to prevent alcohol or drug money being laundered were repurposed as part of the War on Terror but they all stemmed down to the base problem of law enforcement wanting a way to trace previously anonymous cash flows.

Since this was a very vaguely defined claim, it might be more useful if you had something specific to talk about.

> The common definition of “arbitrary” has a connotation of randomness to it. My point was that this isn't random but directed

Yes, it's directed at solving a problem, but the specific solution we arrived at is somewhat random. I'm not sure how to make this clearer.

If you take any set of historical problems and the regulations that were intended to address them, do you agree that a different set of regulations could have solved the same problems? If different ones would also have worked, then aren't the ones we ended up with somewhat arbitrary?