Hillary or Trump: Which of These is the Lesser of Two Evils?

[Pat Mustard]

How much regulation are the repubs supposed to think is necessary?  Their mantra has been deregulation for some time now.  The difference between you as a libertarian and a repub probably isn't economic.  It's almost -certainly- social.
(I feel for you, btw, libertarianism has become so useful as a cover for far right conservatism that even the libertarian party can't fight the spin)

That last bit is quite true.  It doesn't really leave me with a political name, unless I want to smash together socially democract fiscally republican.  But even that isn't quite true.  Republicans talk about deregulation, but they appear to be in favor of deregulation if it benefits corporate America but not if it benefits individual employees or smaller businesses. They like protectionism, emimant domain for private gain, crony capitalism, and licensing to protect existing business in practice.  That is what Trump's wall and 45% tarriff are about.  But you are right that I wouldn't throw banking regs, environmental laws, social security, or a host of other regs out the window.

The problem with deregulation is that it is always favourable to the big beasts. When you remove rules designed to limit certain behaviours from a system it is always the rich and powerful who exploit the lack of brakes on the system. Without severe government regulation of wokers rights we'd have ten year olds working twelve hour shifts and longer (in fact we do, the children are simply hidden away in countries like Bangladesh), and we do know what happens when rules regulating what can be sold, what guarantees are required and whether company x can buy company y are removed from the financial crash of 2008, and many earlier financial and stock market crashes.

Regulation of markets and government intervention are the only two mechanisms we have to ensure the capitalist system which is the current orthodoxy from eating itself every thirty years.