Are you just pointing out an error in his/her reasoning, or do you actually believe what you said? If the latter, do you consider regulation regarding food safety, medical profession and energy industry bad?

I'm playing Devil's advocate in at least half of what I write on political issues; often I don't have a strong personal opinion, since I'm reasonably aware of my ignorance.

I'd like to see some proof that they are better? I consider them on par with each other.

Mainly, because I don't see how Free Markets don't collapse into a Regulated Market by the will of major players? If you are in a relatively Free Market and you gain a monopoly it's wiser, in short term, to invest into instruments to prolong your monopoly, rather than research and development. In other words it is in interest of major monopolies to create regulations to stop competition.

You are correct that investing in attaining a government granted monopoly has a very high return on investment.[1]

This is exactly why many free-market advocates believe that the government should not be allowed to regulate at all, or at least without very strong evidence that the intervention is necessary and proper, as well as limited in time and scope. These people believe that regulators are subject to 'public choice' problems.[2]

[1] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1375082

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice

So you think that antitrust laws are wrong?

Anti-trust laws are at least poorly implemented, and at worst intended to protect local special interests (against the trusts and their descendants).

>"[W]e have no coherent and comprehensive account that differentiates between legal and illegal practices. Nor do we have any good way of devising remedies in complex cases that don’t create more distortions than the illegal practices they are supposed to eliminate."[1]

[1] http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/18/christine-varney-antitrust-...

That's possible (I have a very vague knowledge of the antitrust laws in the US). But a good antitrust law is better than no antitrust law. Do you think that a secret price-setting agreement between AT&T, Verizon and Sprint should be legal? It would be profitable to these companies. In a model, competetive market, this wouldn't work, because a competitor would immediately appear on stage and started offering equivalent products for lower price. But the actual market is absolutely different, that's why regulation is needed.

Have you considered that the US mobile market may be less competitive because of other regulations? Who assigns spectrum and shuts down unlicensed providers?

Yes, that's certainly possible. My position is that zero regulation is often not the optimal amount of regulation.

Regulation is an ill-defined concept, so that statement is meaningless to me. If you mean the same as when people usually call "unregulated", which actually means heavily but baldy regulated, then we're in agreement.

You shouldn't assume that I think regulations are bad from what I wrote; I didn't say it was my position.

I didn't assume it, that's why I asked. Anyway, what exactly was the error in my argument above? All I said was that the common reasoning "regulation in model market is wrong, therefore regulation in real market is wrong" is flawed. Perhaps there are other reasons why regulated markets are always under any circumstances wrong. If so, I'll be happy to discuss them, although I'm convinced they're flawed too (lot of anecdotal evidence).