Deregulation in the sense of removing price controls and barriers to entry is typically good for everyone, examples include airlines and craft beer brewing.

Deregulation in the sense of stripping very specific regulations designed to prevent exploitation are typically good for the owners of capital and bad for everyone else. Examples include the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act (Led to Savings & Loan calamity), the Gramm Leach Bliley Act (Led to GFC), California's attempts to deregulate the energy market (Led to Enron and the energy crisis). It's easy to imagine many more scenarios where industries could be deregulated that would cause massive harm to most of society -- virtually all environmental controls fall into this category.

Some of those scenarios could have been prevented if more facets had been deregulated, but they weren't so we lost trillions of dollars in real value and drove debt through the roof.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Institutions_Deregul...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis

I see what you and shiven mean. I agree those partial deregulations are bad. I say partial because that's not what I usually mean by "deregulation". "Stripping very specific regulations" is just that, just another law being passed, that flips some switch on or off.

When I asked for examples I thought we were talking about total deregulation (I previously thought deregulation was a binary thing - either something is regulated or it isn't at all) but I see it is used in other senses (although it is a bit perplexing to me).

> Some of those scenarios could have been prevented if more facets had been deregulated

Exactly this.

Deregulated Wall Street Banks --> Products like CDOs --> Real Estate bubble --> average Joe's Retirement Funds investing in said bubble (via Wall Street Banks) --> Bubble burst (as always) --> Retirement Funds lose huge amount of money --> average Joe's golden years are now made of lead (Pb) --> Bad for average Joe, his wife Jane and his kids and grandkids (go on, think how).

Deregulation, throughout history (explore the pre-1930's, pre-GreatDepression US economy), has always left average Joe in a badly disadvantaged state, for the long term.

Deregulation in the financial services, which resulted in risky behavior from greedy financiers, and some trillion dollar bailout scheme.

Deregulation in the food industry, allowing certain crappy practices and laxing hugiene standards and protections.

Etc.