The false claim that Democrats are interested in regulations - ANY regulations - and Republicans are against regulations - ANY regulations - often shapes our discussions and is firmly implanted in the mind of the public as a "truth"
James Allworth in the Harvard Business Review recently published an article that highlights a set of regulations (and in some cases, a lack of regulation) that doesn't serve any purpose in protecting the American consumer or the American worker. The main purpose of these regulations are to create a barrier to entry to businesses that are becoming outdated and that would have a hard time competing in a fair environment.
HBR classes these regulations as "corruption". I'm not sure they are corruption in the classic sense, but they do seem to be a case of industry using politicians to advantage themselves against newcomers.
Here are the best examples from the article -
NADA, for instance, recently sued Tesla for running "company-owned dealerships" in Massachusetts and also in New York because the law states that it's illegal for a factory to own a dealership. (To give you some sense of how ridiculous this is, the equivalent in the tech world would be Best Buy suing Apple for launching its own retail stores).
The most infamous example - Copyright
When Walt Disney penned Steamboat Willie — the first cartoon with Mickey Mouse in it — copyright lengths were substantially shorter than they are now (but still enough such that it gave encouragement to Walt to create his famous character). And yet somehow, it seems that every time that Mickey is about to enter the public domain, congress has passed a bill to extend the length of copyright
Advantaging network traffic -
let's say you're a Comcast subscriber. If you watch Saturday Night Live using Netflix, it counts towards your download limit. Watch that very same show using the very same internet connection, but use Comcast's Xfinity app instead — and now, suddenly, the download limit doesn't count.
I think you'd be hard pressed to get Representatives and Senators from either side of the aisle to come out strongly in favor of these conditions. Let's get our reps on record to rationalize these situations and get rid of antiquated rules where it makes sense and put new regulations in place that prevents industry from gaming the legislatures to protect themselves from the technologies and businesses of the future.