Occhio alla regola della ciliegia

It is a familiar story: a problem begets a regulation, which begets attempts to avoid the regulation, which begets a new problem, which begets a new regulation, and so on. [Footnote omitted.] The argument at each regulatory stage, after failure, is that the problem can be solved by smarter or more efficient regulation. But, at the end, one is left wondering whether the game is worth the candle, since the endless cycle of creating, enforcing, evading, and reregulating may dwarf the costs of the original problem.