Several sectors of economic activities have the potential for atrocious externalities and it's absolutely the government's business to know about these and make sure that you're following regulation to minimize these externalities. When you make your employees the neighbours sick (or straight up kill them) it's an enormous failure on the part of government. It's easy to be oblivious to that when you only think about software.

Exhibit A: https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/battery-facility-acc...

Except it seems that it's often large companies - typically those with lots of lawyers - who seem to get away with what I can only describe as "corporate misdeads" most regularly.

"Following regulation" sounds great until it's revealed that corporate lobbyists have been helping (co-)write regulations to make sure that fair competition is quashed.