But while consumer decision-making can be a potent restraint on matters consumers pay attention to — like price — consumers can’t protect themselves against hazards they don’t know about. Sometimes consumers can’t understand the risks of their conduct, which may help explain why so many consumers lost their homes in the subprime crisis. Other times companies conceal their misconduct, as Volkswagen did with diesel emissions. Or companies may create enough doubt that consumers can’t determine the truth, as tobacco companies did with the health dangers of smoking. Consumers who want to continue enjoying a product may choose to believe the company so they can continue doing so. Many smokers did just that.

The third protection is regulation. Lawmakers can study problems and require businesses to protect consumers against risks that ordinary people might not anticipate. For example, consumers getting credit cards need not master the meaning of universal default or double-cycle billing because Congress has forbidden credit card companies from employing those methods.

But regulation is under constant attack. The Republican Party platform proposes a “regulatory budget” that would limit the costs regulation can impose on the economy. Many of the attacks take place outside consumers’ view, in arcane congressional bills or when bank lobbyists are named to head government agencies. But though out of sight might mean out of mind, it doesn’t mean nonexistent.

One problem with regulation is that often the people who benefit from it — consumers — are not the people who feel most keenly the burdens it imposes. The businesses that must comply with regulations no longer make the money they once made from selling injurious products. Even if their products did not cause problems, they may now have to spend money complying with regulations. Consequently, many businesses and their lobbyists fight hard against regulation. They argue that regulation raises prices and restricts access to things consumers would otherwise have. Sometimes, that is so. But other times it isn’t, and even when it is, society is sometimes better off as a result.

Critics of regulation don’t just attack its costs. They also ask who is better able to protect your family: you or a government employee. Perhaps the people who lost their homes because of predatory lending would have been better off if policy makers had decided earlier that sometimes the answer is a bureaucrat.