Laws passed to hand power to market incumbents and suppress competition usually aren't named "The Incumbent Protection and Consumer Price-Gouging Act of 2010". Instead, they're passed under the guise of remedying some terrible wrong in the marketplace. We get elaborate and expensive certification regimes . . . into which existing providers are grandfathered, belying the justification that the certification is needed to ensure that consumers aren't badly hurt by unregulated manicurists and interior decorators. Or elaborate regulatory schemes that are expensive to comply with--giving large incumbents a significant advantage over upstart competitors. Always, always the argument is that this is for the consumers, those benighted fools who would otherwise be helpless fodder for quacks and charlatans.