I'd never quite thought about it in these terms before, but the way you laid it out makes it obvious: there's no replacing politics. At most, you can hide it.

I'd never quite thought about it in these terms before, but the way you laid it out makes it obvious: there's no replacing politics. At most, you can hide it. The reason it cannot be replaced is that there will always be resentment and dissatisfaction brewing among society's relative 'losers'. Eventually, society's "losers" will want to change things. Whether those people are right or not about which policies are hurting them is almost irrelevant. They will want the agency to make some change - any change. But: if you factor out all of the things that are still up for debate and start re-categorizing them as laws of nature or apolitical infrastructure, then there's nothing left to change! It will be cold comfort to them if all of human policy is "above changing". What they will hear is "Everything is fine. Stay where you are."