> The more I encounter other powerful government bureaucracies (like building codes, local government, zoning, legislation), the more I suspect they work the sa

> The more I encounter other powerful government bureaucracies (like building codes, local government, zoning, legislation), the more I suspect they work the same way. It depends. Knowing some government organizations in Germany this is quite spot on especially when "CEO" level positions are set by political policies based on regular elections and not based on normal carrer-based government servants. However there are exceptions but they tend to be rarer the bigger an organization becomes. > Somebody at the time it was formalized decided "this is how it should work" on the basis of the best information available at the time, and then once it's formalized, it's virtually impossible to change. This is indeed also accurate but depends on precedent and the number of relevant dependent entites. If you have precendet of changing a set of rules (somewhat) regularly then dependants can get used to adapting it, e.g., tarifs, tax code and parts of building code. This however gets a lot harder when more people depend on it because you will then have to make sure (information of/about) your rule changes get propagated appropriately, e.g., updates to driving safety legislation that affect everyone with a car.