If a suspect nicely asks a police officer not to arrest them, and the officer complies, that's a failure of policing.
The only difference here is that the vulnerability of regulatory bodies to asking nicely is so well-recognized that it has a fancy name ("Regulatory Capture"), and is backed by loads of published research, and quite frankly is probably the reason that the business class even submits to this sort of regulation at all.
If the police chief was asked on a golf course not to arrest someone, but instead do "self policing", and he complied, it's still a failure in policing, and not any failure of whatever "self policing" is supposed to be.
Maybe we need a regulation solution that doesn't involve handing over ultimate authority half the time to a party that is consistently on record as opposing regulation?
