Mainly thinking about this because of some of the comments in this post here, but I do think while what we currently have right now is way too much regulation.
Some examples of 'good regulation' in my opinion would be the existence of drivers' licenses, 'right to repair' laws, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act and building codes.
While some notable 'bad regulation' is anything to do with 2A restrictions and the modern health care industry.
Overall, I'm just trying to gauge what is good vs bad regulation.
this will probably be unpopular, but I do think regulation is necessary at a base level.
in theory, regulation ensures a base level of quality for products sold on the market. For instance, the FDA ensures that the food you buy at the supermarket won't kill you or make you sick (at least, not immediately), and insures the tools are available to identify allergens for customers. building codes ensure that any house on the real estate market will at least be structurally sound.
Other regulations like speed limits ensure a baseline for public behavior, and give a metric for cops to be able to arrest people who are putting others in danger.
While we do have a ton of over regulation right now (looking at you CAFE standards!), the bigger problem is corruption within the regulating authorities. we saw with covid that there is a revolving door between big pharma executives and the FDA. with that kind of power, the pharmaceutical companies can get the regulating authorities to give them sweetheart deals, while creating regulations that destroy their competition. I'm willing to bet this issue is not unique to the pharma industry, not by a long shot.
there needs to be a mechanism within our government to eliminate conflict of interest between regulating authorities and the institution they are supposed to be regulating. if that mechanism already exists, it needs to be enforced.
The type of regulations you're talking about exist to create trust in situations where there is no preexisting relationship between the parties. However, in many cases they needn't be proactive (you must be licenced/inspected/approved beforehand) but could be reactive (if your actions cause harm you will be punished accordingly.) In most cases I think I'd prefer regulations be more reactive on a smaller scale and only be proactive when dealing with larger projects/organizations, but I don't yet have a particularly well defined idea of where the line is where you should move from reactive to proactive.
I suppose a decent example of what you mean is a basic level of bureaucratic requirements and paperwork, maybe some regular inspections as need-be, responses to consumer concerns and whistleblowers, and then of course punitive courses of action for those that are discovered for not only failing to comply with regulations but also managing to cause active harm.
The FDA, at least as it pertains to the food industry, is a reasonably decent example to what's sort of ideal, like Heretic indicated. Although the FDA has been massively dropping the ball on things like baby food and baby formula in recent years, by not actively pursuing reports and instead responding to concern with pure skepticism...