There's no strong consensus, but there's weak consensus that post-GFC regulation is a factor behind but is not causal in any way, for the decrease in IPOs. Here's a paper [1] (well it's the paper author discussing his paywalled paper lol) exploring SOX regulations and their effects on IPOs. There's other papers and I think a good survey will help you on this topic. I don't think there's consensus on regulations being the causal factor, but it is one of many.
I thought GP was modest in calling it out as simply a contributing factor. Regulation is complicated and reaching for it should be something done with care.
(Also FWIW, I think you're being a bit cheap by appealing to culture war talking points.)
It's hard for me to read '"Regulations bad" is a pretty common platitude around here but you've stated your main thesis, here, without a hint of support to back it.' as anything more than that.
It's an observation about prevailing libertarian values in the HN community that tend to attract upvotes while going unchallenged.
If you consider that part of a "culture war", then it seems that term has lost all meaning. Might as well just accuse me of being "woke" and get it over with.
I think this forum has a lot of values and don't think it's been libertarian in outlook in a long time based on what gets upvoted here so appealing to that is a bit silly but anyway I don't think this is a fruitful conversation so have a good day.
I think we're running into (or at least pretty close to) a Two Guys Fallacy here:
There's still a strong libertarian streak in HN posters, in a variety of ways.
However, there are also (mostly) different posters who have more vocally shifted the site's Overton window to the left.
These days, I find it fairly common to, for instance, make a comment that points out the very obvious problems the Republican Party has created in recent years, get downvoted to -3, and then upvoted to +5 (or vice versa), all within a few hours. This would suggest that there are contingents of posters (or at least voters!) in both camps.
I generally operate with the understanding that HN today has lots of groups, with an overall "left" lean (as much as anyone can flatten politics into a single axis.) Libertarians, leftists, liberals, nationalists, everyone is here. Appealing to one "enemy" group strikes me as a cheap blow; it's sure to increase engagement for your post with little added discourse value. IMHO at least.
I thought GP was modest in calling it out as simply a contributing factor. Regulation is complicated and reaching for it should be something done with care.
(Also FWIW, I think you're being a bit cheap by appealing to culture war talking points.)
[1]: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2009/09/21/the-effect-of-sox...