By "paradoxes of the regulatory state," I mean self-defeating regulatory strategies-strategies that achieve an end precisely opposite to the one intended, or to the only public-regarding justification that can be brought forward in their support.' This definition excludes, and I will not discuss, a number of pathologies of the regulatory state that are clearly related to the phenomenon of regulatory paradoxes, such as strategies whose costs exceed their benefits, or that have unintended adverse consequences. An example of a regulatory paradox would be a Clean Air Act that actually made the air dirtier, 2 or a civil rights law that increased the incidence of racial discrimination.' A large literature, inspired by public choice theory and welfare economics, has grown up around the theory that purportedly public-interested regulation is almost always an effort to create a cartel or to serve some private interest at the public expense. 4 Although I shall be drawing on much of that literature here, I do not conclude,