The reason for the byzantine complexity about drone regulation isn't that some Big Government is injecting its ham-fisted regulatory appendages into a problem that it doesn't understand.
It's that, for the most part, no one wants your drones in the air at all. People don't like these things. They're noisy. They're scary. Their operators tend to be pushy jerks more often than not. They just aren't what a median voter wants to see on a nice sunny afternoon in the park or trail or whatever. And those voters governments, at all levels, are responding to that desire.
Basically: drone operators are the mid-life-nerd-crisis version of skate punks. No one wants them hanging around either, and skateboarding regulation is at least as complicated as drone rules.