There have been a bunch of papers published discussing these topics at great length, and many attempts at producing simpler systems that still work at non-trivi

There have been a bunch of papers published discussing these topics at great length, and many attempts at producing simpler systems that still work at non-trivial scales. I'd suggest taking a look at https://nixos.org/~eelco/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf https://nixos.org/~eelco/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf and/or https://nixos.org/~eelco/pubs/nspfssd-lisa2004-final.pdf https://nixos.org/~eelco/pubs/nspfssd-lisa2004-final.pdf for an overview of the origins of Guix and the reasoning behind its apparent complexity.