"There are some areas where stating the rules of the game is important."

Any area we you want a competitive market, for a start. The web moving from totally decentralised to totally monopolised in 5-10 years is hard empirical evidence that you don't get free markets (ie free of economic rents like "IP") without robust antitrust regulation, and enforcement with teeth.

""well-understood" regulation is nearly non-existent right now."

That's been true since Reagan and Thatcher, because regulation has been strategically demonised. By people who stood to profit from creating those monopolies, and externalising their business costs in ways regulations used to ban. The crusade against "Big Government" and "red tape" was never about our freedom, it's about theirs.

Regulation of commerce, in some form, is inherent to any peaceful, post-scarcity society. Even an anarchist one.

"Politicians and bureaucrats race to show that they're doing something (but almost always not the right something)."

Fair point. The Link Tax and Chat Control debacles are recent examples. But this is why we have democratic processes. We the people have the freedom to change who those politicians are, so they have to consult us to stay in power. If only we had that much say about what corporate executives do with our collective resources.

"We need to significantly rethink who and how regulation gets set."

I agree it's not perfect, and I think we can do better. There's been broad consensus on this - from radical left to radical right - since the GFC, which kicked off a plethora of direct democracy experiments. vTaiwan/ Pol.is and Citizens Assemblies remain my favorites so far.