Aviation will always be a magnet for regulation.
All decisionmakers understand the risks in ground transport, and the costs of a lost life have all been worked out, etc. Nobody really bothers about train crashes, etc.
Aviation is different. Deep down, everybody getting into a passenger jet has their fingers mentally (and many have them literally) crossed behind their backs, hoping the thing doesn't crash. (I certainly have, knowing the LHS will be a good pilot but the RHS is often just a "kid" wearing a fancy outfit; this is OK because a 737 can be easily flown single pilot... so long as the automation all works, which 99.999% of the time it does).
And almost nobody outside specialised aviation engineering areas understands how/why planes crash.
With GA, you don't have the passenger fear (in the sense that nobody
has to fly GA as a passenger) but the public has the deep fear of a plane crashing onto somebody. This is extremely rare but the fear/emotion are there.
So aviation will always be a ripe area for regulation which in the GA case will be totally disproportionate to the public risk.
The lack of understanding by outsiders makes it a ripe area for empire building, too.
That was all going along fine before 9/11.
Now it's even better
Every good for nothing twit who can bluff and wear a yellow jacket can walk into some good for nothing "security" job and order people about.
Regulation is not going to go away. The trick is to find ways to live with it. It's not hard.
I think EASA, when it has all shaken out say 5 years from now, and all the under the table bent deals have been done, will be a net benefit to VFR GA, which is the bulk of it.
And it's never been easy or cheap. Certainly getting an IR used to be easier, say 30 years ago, but overall little has changed. The cost of a PPL has probably remained constant as a % of average salary, over 40 years; I recall somebody from univ. (1975) who had a PPL back then.