[jokethrowaway]

This definitely rings true.

But I'd say it's not a feature of governments only, any sufficiently big organisation which centralise power ends up being like this. That's why large corporates need nimble startups to innovate: startups either innovate or die.

The government is just the largest example of this phenomenon - and they don't have any analogue for startups, they're just doomed to grow larger and larger over centuries until they collapse.

Look at the USA, once the perfect minarchist experiment and now the largest employer in the world.