I owned a small business by my industry's standards.

A small business is a job, not an asset. But it was a good job. It provided for my family and the families of my dedicated, reliable and professional co-workers. Business was good, the atmosphere relaxed and our customers, whom I'd come to know and respect, were happy with our services.

Then Congress unwittingly ensured that our success would not last, or if it did, that my company and our competitors would be restrained greatly by regulatory inertia. The federal government is not solely to blame for my company's struggles. But a clear demarcation point, the moment when things turned south, for us at least, very much coincides with the implementation of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law.

My company was an interdealer broker of over-the-counter energy derivatives, specifically natural gas. Simply put, our company matched up institutional buyers and sellers of derivatives—futures, options, structures tailored to specific pipelines—and collected a per-contract fee for our services. I co-founded this group with partners and angel investors in 2006. By 2010, the company was profitable.

Then came Dodd-Frank. Stacked nearly a foot high when printed out, this incomprehensible bill affected my small business in ways that no one crafting it could ever have anticipated. Though the law is far too complex to parse here, one of its overall assumptions is rather simple: A derivative is a derivative is a derivative. Thus, the law considers a utility looking to hedge its long-term exposure to fluctuating gas prices, and the brokers who facilitate such deals, to be as much a threat to global order as cowboy credit-default-swap speculators stacking up insane leverage.