I disagree with your assertion that the current state of federal regulation is irreverent to the debate. This is the kind of oppressive environment that results when the United States government tries to regulate the economy. The topic at hand is the regulation of the US economy by the federal government. Our current state of affairs is the position we find ourselves in when the federal government puts these regulations into practice. Unless you can point to specific examples of how the government can pragmatically reform these regulations, the point stands that regulation of the economy under the federal government produces a toxic environment for small businesses.
Your examples of beneficial regulations are all well and good, but why do these regulations need to be enforced by the federal government? Surely the free market can decide which businesses are worth patronizing and which are a waste of money. In your bank example, how long do you think a bank that routinely slaps borrowers with absorbent fees will stay in business? If word gets out that a business is treating its consumers unfairly, don't you think people will stop using that business and go elsewhere? You can't run a business without a consumer base and driving your consumers away with unfair practices is bad for business.
Since you bring up the topic of banks, why don't we talk about the unfair lending practices of banks which led to the 2008 economic collapse. Banks still routinely engaged in unethical lending practices by exploiting loopholes in government regulations. This led to the financial collapse of most of these larger banks. Free market capitalism says these banks failed the consumers and thus failed as businesses. But then what did the government do? They recouped the losses of most of these large banks by giving them hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money. The government decided these huge corporations that wildly mismanaged funds deserved your money more than the American people.
But without intervention by the federal government, there would have been another great depression, right? So wasn't the bailout actually a good thing?
No, not really. Reports from the White House show that the economy would have recovered faster if the government had done nothing at all. And there is the problem with federal regulations. Decisions are made by people who are uninformed or irresponsible. Regulations are either so strict that new businesses cannot succeed, or so lax that big business can walk all over the average consumer. You even admitted yourself that federal regulations are cumbersome and in need of reform. So why not cut out the middle man and let the market decide? You say it is to protect the consumer, but consumers are smart enough to make their own informed decisions about what to purchase. Human greed and dishonesty already runs rampant even in the over-regulated state we find ourselves in now. All these regulations do is legally protect the rights of the richest CEOs to trample their competition. There is no need for the government to artificially interfere with the natural tide of the economy.
Unless I am misunderstanding your last paragraph, you are essentially conceding my point. If lawmakers do as little as possible, how is this different than an economy run by the free market? Government time and time again demonstrates their incompetence when handling these issues, so why should we surrender control to them?