&gt;  raise prices on the services they are allowed to sell, to make up for the lost profits on the services they can&#x27;t sell any more.<p>Economics doesn&#x27;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 <i>wait</i> until regulation to artificially raise prices? Their prices are as high as they can go already.<p>Harmful regulation raises prices by raising the price of inputs and raising the <i>marginal cost</i> 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.)