The other way to look at these items you posted are that they are some of the most highly regulated, taxed and skimmed money makers for government. These regulations have given the government the excuse to increase the size of the bureaucracy by leaps and bounds. For example, the FCC regulating access to the internet, as well as Television and Radio. Yet, the government did little to actually incentivize the CREATION of radio and television. The only thing I can credit them with is identifying these things as money makers and then regulating them and increasing their power over them. Then we have airplanes --- TSA, FAA, and a few more alphabet soup organizations. Telephone? FCC again. Electricity - well the EPA is involved recently, and of course there's the Dept. of Energy. Antibiotics? There's tons of health organizations doing oversight and control over anything from asprin to drugs used for lethal injections.
I'm not saying the FAA isn't needed, or that the Dept. of Energy is a waste ... certainly a portion of these regulations are for safety and there are positives that go along with them. The by product though, is a vast bureaucracy regulating every and all things. There is not, one thing in your or anyone's house in the United States that is not regulated. From stuffed animals, to the timber or wall board, light bulbs, computer, and paint --- ALL of it is regulated. I submit all of that power is not needed and to go full circle back to the original point --- those regulations are not incentives for the creation of the product or that government can take credit for invention or innovations that were put forth. Government simply stepped in and passed laws regulating these things primarily to make money on them, and secondarily to claim such regulations are required for "safety" reasons. Therefore government, according to Pete Stark, can do anything they want.
