The AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies published Sam Peltzman's lecture on the hazards of regulation (pdf version here, and click here for a link to the video). Peltzman reviews two issues. The first is the way in which government regulations affect behavior, an issue once ignored but now frequently called the Peltzman effect. For example, airbags make the driver safer in the event of a crash, which can reduce deaths, but also induce riskier behavior by drivers, leading to larger numbers of collisions (including those with pedestrians who are not protected by airbags). Peltzman mentions evidence that the Americans with Disabilities Act lowered job prospects for the disabled by raising the cost of dismissing the disabled relative to discriminating against them in the first place. The Endangered Species Act induces pre-emption: drain wetlands before the government finds an endangered species there.

The second issue is the way in which regulation is protected by progress:

You will not find an Endangered Species Act or a decade long drug approval process in poor countries. The costs of such luxury are too palpable in such societies, but in ours they are dissolved by the progress of opulence.