Why does government keep growing, even when it fails? Why do laws multiply, even when their problems are gone? And why do we get more rules and more legal complexity – while entire professions depend on laws that never die? Laws, not elections, are the main force shaping modern economies and societies. They decide who may enter professions, how markets work, what technologies are allowed, and which activities qualify for public funding. Forget short-term controversies and culture wars – it is the quiet accumulation of laws, government agencies, and compliance regimes that shapes economic opportunity, and with it the resilience of political systems people trust less each year. As thinkers from Mancur Olson to Robert Dahl have long argued, power in modern societies rarely concentrates through dramatic takeovers, but through institutions that organise, protect, and reproduce themselves. Yet this process remains poorly understood by voters and policymakers alike. Mat Bauer argues that regulation should be seen not as a neutral tool, but as an evolving institutional system with its own incentives and survival mechanisms. Once written, rules generate permanent careers, permanent budgets, professional ecosystems, and lobbying networks that quietly work to preserve and expand them. This is rarely driven by corruption or conspiracy, but by ordinary behaviour – people respond to what pays, what protects, and what offers long-term security. Regulation grows not only top-down through legislation, but bottom-up through professional practice, guidance, certification, procurement rules, and court interpretation. Legal complexity becomes a form of capital. It rewards those who master it, sell it, enforce it, and help others navigate it. In the end, complexity is not a flaw of the system. It is the product. Bauer derives these and other lessons from lively stories of how regulated professions and publicly funded sectors operate in practice, and why they persist even when performance is weak. Some of the cases he explores involve NGOs, lawyers, tax advisers, teachers, welfare administrations, professors, accreditation bodies, public broadcasters, tech consultants, pharmaceutical regulators, and defence procurement. Others involve planning law, copyright, certification schemes, compliance training, public grants, and revolving doors between agencies and consultancy firms. Blending political economy with sharp satire, The Deep State Wants a Hug shows how good intentions evolve into permanent income streams – and why, in modern societies, some of the safest careers are built not on selling goods or services, but on selling compliance with the law.