> raise prices on the services they are allowed to sell, to make up for the lost profits on the services they can't sell any more.
Economics doesn't work that way. If a company is out to maximize profit (and any company that stoops to fraud is almost certainly out to maximize profit), why would they wait until regulation to artificially raise prices? Their prices are as high as they can go already.
Harmful regulation raises prices by raising the price of inputs and raising the marginal cost of an additional product, resulting in fewer transactions being profitable and a deadweight loss to both the consumer and producer (split according to how price-sensitive the two sides are.)
> Their prices are as high as they can go already.
"As high as they can go" in what sense? If you mean their prices before regulation were determined by supply and demand, then the market was working and there was no need for the regulation. If you mean their prices were determined by something else, what?
> Harmful regulation raises prices by raising the price of inputs
That's one way regulation can be harmful, but not the only way. Another way is for it to outlaw positive sum transactions that, in its absence, would have taken place. You're assuming without proof that the regulations in question "know" exactly which transactions are the "right" ones to outlaw. No real regulation has ever been anywhere close to that accurate.
Economics doesn't work that way. If a company is out to maximize profit (and any company that stoops to fraud is almost certainly out to maximize profit), why would they wait until regulation to artificially raise prices? Their prices are as high as they can go already.
Harmful regulation raises prices by raising the price of inputs and raising the marginal cost of an additional product, resulting in fewer transactions being profitable and a deadweight loss to both the consumer and producer (split according to how price-sensitive the two sides are.)