[johncolanduoni]

> Sometimes it surprises me that professional software engineers deal with systems design tradeoffs every day in their own work, but then fail to see that systems design logic also applies to human institutions.

I think it's because the equilibriums look much worse. Even if your system is a pile of hacks on top of hacks, it might at least be good enough right now. Not to mention that sometimes you engineer something that works pretty well. Meanwhile the legal system often fails even for the exact situations considered when the rules were made, and there's pretty much no one would feel there isn't some gross injustice happening within it quite frequently (though the injustice may vary).