We seem to be doomed to ride a pendulum of <ol> <b>Build a useful societal benefit</b> (USB) Have the USB be <b>coopted by vultures and con-men</b> Organize regulation to <b>prevent abuse</b> of the USB Have the USB get <b>mired in regulation</b> and become less obviously useful---because things get complex, especially with pressures from con-men that cause a constant papering over of holes in the regulations until they're so <b>large and complex</b> that no-one understands them except for a cottage industry of experts that has appeared like an opportunistic parasite Have the USB be coopted by a different cottage industry of experts <b>gaming the regulations</b>, which are now too complex to be understood by anyone but them <b>Settle</b> into a situation where the USB is still there, but <b>costs much more</b> relative to its benefit because of the regulations and cottage industry (both of which grew because the USB is under constant attack) <b>Forget</b> that this is the situation Become convinced by either---(A) new con-men or (B) existing con-men or (C) legitimate fools who don't know any better and think that there's always a simple solution to complex problems and that any given complex solution is always overkill anyway---that (D) the <b>regulations</b> were probably never useful, but even granting that they may have been temporarily useful in less enlightened times that (E) they <b>should now be eliminated</b> because they're so obviously not useful---obvious, that is, to those who either (F) don't understand the complexity, (G) don't want to understand it because doing so might conflict with the preexisting conclusion or, more likely, their own income streams, or (H) are flat-out incapable of understanding complexity---that we don't need to keep those regulations in anything but the most rudimentary forms Convince everyone that the USB will be just fine without armor and protection because <b>we're all more enlightened now</b> Laugh richly and deeply cynically while a handful benefit massively and almost everyone else suffers and then <b>GOTO 2</b> </ol>