Of course they do, if enforced. The number of eight year-olds working in factories is substantially lower than it used to be due to regulations. *in modern democracies

If you do regulate. We currently have full regulatory capture in most industries and regulators that are doing their jobs are either hamstrung or the laws are so far behind the industries that they can’t or won’t work.

The key to proper regulation is to keep money and influence from pooling at the top, making it difficult for any single person to buy enough influence.

As it is, we have a dozen monopolies that should be broken up that are making a small section of the population so rich they are essentially above laws.

But, proper regulation can exist if people want it, and more specifically in the case of the USA, legislators want it. Unfortunately, Dems actively prevent it, and republicans are ripping it down, so the rest of us are kinda fucked.