Who REALLY lobbies for regulation?

Hint: it’s not the “socialists” …
Here are three examples of big business lobbying for regulation to the detriment of small business:

1. Big publishers in mid-90s pushing to extend the length of copyrights and gut the idea of fair-use; this pretty much stifled the growth of upstart Kinko’s and their production of course packets. In addition, it removed a lot of material from the public domain, material that could’ve been used to spur further innovation and creativity.
2. Big Ag (Monsanto, Conagra, et al) lobbied for regulations that would allow them to patent genomes, thus creating a market for GMOs that would further undercut small farmers who were already under duress …
3. Pharmaceutical companies lobbied to have the patent period  extended to 17 years in order to stifle drug development by small bio-chem firms that were popping up everywhere.

In addition, corporate welfare in the form of tax incentives to big-box stores like Target, Walmart, Sears and Cabela’s give large competitive advantages to big businesses over extant and potential small businesses.
The problem isn’t too much or too little regulation; it’s misapplied regulation. Putting the wrong regulations in place just end up having, from the naive lawmaker’s and citizen’s perspective at least, unintended consequences that are detrimental to small business.