Perhaps the parent is too critical of the rule makers, but you are far too forgiving.
Laws in the US happen like this: someone has trouble parking one day and decides that the solution is to make more parking a legal requirement, giving little or no thought to the second or third order effects of those laws.
I'm not a big fan of philosopher Michael Huemer, but he makes an interesting metaphor regarding laws. He compares society with the human body and laws with medicine. For a long time medicine wasn't based on empirical evidence, but on logic and "common sense." Most medical advice from before the scientific method was more harmful than helpful. The human body is such a complex and delicate system that almost all interventions are more harmful than helpful. Even in the presence of a medical issue, unless there is evidence that a given medical intervention is more helpful than harmful, no medical intervention is probably better than an unproven one.
Just because a societal ill exists, doesn't mean that the first legal remedy that pops into someone's head is a good idea. Even if that idea solves the problem (a big if), will its second and third order effects cause more damage than the original problem?
American political discourse is dominated by a desire to "take action." But unless lawmakers are willing to start consulting economists and domain experts, no action at all is probably better.
You seem to think that endless sets rules is a necessary evil, but my intuition is the opposite: for every US law that makes for a better society, there are ten which are holding us back.