I think this a lot as the root cause of where "bullshit jobs" come from. This pattern happens all the time: 1. Government passes a law to try to improve some p

I think this a lot as the root cause of where "bullshit jobs" come from. This pattern happens all the time: 1. Government passes a law to try to improve some problem. All laws in a democracy are the result of a lot of horse trading, so the law itself generally includes a lot of tradeoffs. 2. The new regulations bring up a need for a whole host of people to understand and implement these regulations, who sell their services to other companies and the public at large. Of course, these jobs exist to make it easier for others to follow the regulations, which means that people in these jobs have no incentive to make the regulations simpler in the first place. For example, a lot of people in the US are familiar with flexible spending accounts, FSAs, which let you spend money on health-related items without paying the income tax on the money for those payments. But the rules for FSAs can be notoriously complex. As one example, many products/services are "dual purpose", so you can spend FSA money on a massage if a doctor prescribes it, but not if you just want a massage to feel better. So a whole host of "wellness services" have popped up that will essentially write you a dubious "letter of medical necessity" (literally nobody is ever turned down) so you can buy these items with an FSA. But the real kicker is FSA is "use it or lose it" - you set aside money from your paycheck at the beginning of the year, but if you don't spend it on medically-approved items, it reverts back to your employer at the end of the year. And 25% of all FSA funds are forfeited every year! So the end state is that all of this complexity was set up to create and manage FSAs, but, on average, it's essentially a wash for participants as a whole due to the forfeited money.