Sure, but I don't believe anyone advocated switching to jquery (or, a few years later, getting rid of it) consciously thinking it was a useless thing to do; and

Sure, but I don't believe anyone advocated switching to jquery (or, a few years later, getting rid of it) consciously thinking it was a useless thing to do; and similarly I don't believe any biz person introduces a process thinking, "haha this will help widen the bureaucratic moat around my team". The truth is, a lot of those people spend a lot of time trying to streamline processes and remove bureaucracy, and if they didn't, it'd be even worse.