Businesses are forced to devote far too many resources to compliance with government mandates. Many of which are both nensensical and on many levels contradictory. This forces irrational actions on business, and it can become a habit to act and think irrationally to be "proactive" on future crap from the government..

And once the craziness breaks out, its tough to rein in :P

Compassion for whom exactly are you referring?

It's hard to avoid the larger the business gets. If government would stay out of it I think many companies would fail when they got too large. Unfortunately in business size matters. The bigger you are the better the tax breaks.