We can do better! Public education campaigns and support for alternatives for starters. The "they didn't fix the issues, so new laws will fix their issues" is myopic at the least, and potentially harmful if it doesn't fix the issues either.
You can educate me about green energy all you want, but if all the power providers I can switch to are burning coal, you're just wasting your time and money.
Passing laws is the opposite of myopic behaviour. To put it bluntly - theft is outlawed, not something we discourage solely through, uh, education campaigns.
Actually more than that, but I'm just using one of the shorter timelines involved.
So if the rather hands-off approach didn't work, campaigns didn't work, capitalism didn't work because it was always on the side of violating privacy? Well there comes the hammer.