Deregulation sounds like a word that was specially crafted from a political focus group. It sounds innocent, righteous, echoing freedom from an oppressive state. It feels like the path to being released from an unfair burden or impediment which would allow corporations to meet their capitalist potential, and bring great benefits to society far and wide.
Yes, maybe that is why they inserted such a word into the American dialogue, and thus into the American psyche. Repeat it over and over again and it becomes a mantra for a nations economic freedom, vitality, the elusive American Dream. Everyone get's a form of mass hysteria, and you create something, a false persona, out of nothing. But all that has been done is the shape shifting of a word, and it's true meaning for the purpose of endearing another more palatable synonym for public consumption and acceptance. The word that corporations don't want to come out and say is "law", because that is exactly what a regulation is.
Like society, business only stays civil when there is a framework of laws to keep it that way, to manage the complexities and imperfections of people, who by history can't manage themselves without the invisible barrier of carrot and stick to keep their behavior within a nations agreed upon limits. We have seen the lack of regulations (laws) consequences on the 99% time and time again through history (Great Depression, Great Recession etc...), two of the most devastating examples of greed in American history, the first happening from the absence of regulation, the second happening from the repeal of regulation (Glass-Steagall Act) enacted after the first, to prevent the second, and it would have if it was left in place, but corporate influence in the government made millionaires, but left the 99% unrepresented, except in jobless, foreclosures, and poverty statistics.
Imagine a corporate crony coming out and saying "What we need here is for corporations to follow fewer laws, or write laws that can't be enforced", versus the usual more intoxicating "The road to economic prosperity and jobs is for fundamental deregulation which unleashes corporate innovation and growth".
Most of the time deregulation involves infringing on the liberty, health, and well being of the 99%. Bills that were written by the legislatures and /or the executive branch and passed into laws for national security, labor-human rights, food and drug - product safety, environmental - resource use etc..., are all there for a reason, because human beings, "We the People" under the U.S. Constitution are endowed with unalienable and alienable rights. We were here first, we delivered independence to this country, corporations were transient organizations whose original charter was to not only make a profit, but to benefit the people. Though over time, and with necessity corporations needed permanent existence, but many fail to recognize the obligation the founding fathers gave them of benefiting the people, and now exploit them.
Deregulation is loosening or removing laws that corporations don't like because they interfere with the shortest distance between investment and profit, and if those laws adversely effect you, your family, community, state, or the nation's health, quality of life, or even life itself, well your collateral damage on the way to profits. Now, we are talking on a sliding scale here, small businesses aren't corporations, and not all corporations are bad corporate citizens, but corporations aren't people, they are capitalistic machines, the end goal is profit, the larger they are, the more disassociated they are from the 99% world.
Imagine for a moment, if the people of the United States said, "We have had enough, we need some relief in order to realize our potential as American Citizens, we need some deregulation". We could start with taxes we didn't vote for, laws we didn't vote for, at every level of government from local, county, state, and national levels there are some pretty restrictive and intrusive regulations levied against the people. It would be the same idea, with the same results. Chaos and carnage.
Corporations, the rich, the 1%, have laws that effect their interest altered, and abolished all the time. They write laws, and amendments to laws and hand it to legislatures. They have money, they have contacts. Their world is not our world, because of their background and their wealth.
But all that left along the road, deregulation is code for breaking the law, by altering the law, for a shorter, quicker path to profit which usually comes at the expense and suffering of the 99% who are under the rule of law, abiding by the law. We are not being deregulated, but we are victims of deregulation.
We were warned about deregulation of financial services 12 years ago
Rachel Maddow Show : Deregulation for Dummies
Soros : Deregulation led to Collapse