Railroads were undone by a first a corrupted monopoly and then by the post-war interstate highway initiative championed by all the war profiteers hoping to profit further in peace time.
Deregulation of the Airlines has resulted in massive layoffs, instability, increased mechanical failures, delays, and horrible customer service (tacked on charges, re-schedule charges, no refunds, longer lines, passenger harassment, removal of amenities like food and water, etc.) with not enough change in ticket value to justify any of the other deficiencies. With the fleets continuing to age, we’re only going to see more mechanical problems in the future.
Looking to the sorry examples of deregulated TV or Radio will find you nothing good to report.. several hundred channels and nothing on, propaganda machine for war, corruption and self-descructive consumerism.
Regulation in most cases, provides the only preventative protection available to the general public (or as industry would call them, the customer). Why do we have a list of ingredients on our food packages? Regulation. Why is “price fixing” (a secret agreement between competitors to artificially inflate prices) prosecutable? Regulation. Why do we have an 8 hour work day? a 40 hour work week? workplace safety standards? It’s all various forms of Regulation.
Caps on what big business can do are necessary because otherwise, they WILL eventually increase the severity of immoral practices to make bigger and bigger profits. History is RIFE with examples of this.