Just as regulation serves as a sort of a subsidy for bureaucracy, ensuring that experts are needed to meet out the rules appropriately, it also presents an opportunity for the regulated to bend the rules to their own advantage.

Consider New York City rent-control laws. Though ostensibly designed to protect tenants, regulation tilts control to the shady and unethical, those ready to manipulate the system to their own advantage. Turns out the Trump family was pretty good at this.

Toward the end of the 1990s, the Trumps had a problem. They needed to split up the empire of the legendary builder Fred C. Trump while avoiding heavy inheritance taxes.

Fred Trump could leave money to his three children, including future President Donald Trump. But doing so meant a stiff 55 percent tax at the time, which would have halved his fortune and handing it to the federal government. According to a New York Times investigation, rent control provided the solution.

Real estate barons, the Trumps understood regulation and set up a corporation called All County Building Supply & Maintenance.

On paper, the company would purchase goods to improve the sea of red-bricked apartments the Trumps owned in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. In reality, the company didn’t buy a thing. According to the New York Times, they just collected reimbursement checks from Fred Trump.

Not only did this setup allow the Trumps to avoid that hefty 55 percent gift tax, it let them jack up the price of units in a rent-stabilized apartment. The city of New York prohibited raising the rent without the approval of a government board. The Trumps knew this and used it to their advantage, justifying rent increases because of major capital improvement.

As Robert Trump, brother of the president, acknowledged in a deposition, “The higher the markup would be, the higher the rent that might be charged.”

None of that family faced serious legal consequences though. They knew the system, understood it, and eventually manipulated it to their advantage. Too bad for the poor suckers stuck paying higher rent in apartments that were never actually improved.