I feel like the problem is that it's set up as a virtuously adversarial system where everyone is expected to strenuously advocate for their side's interests and

I feel like the problem is that it's set up as a virtuously adversarial system where everyone is expected to strenuously advocate for their side's interests and find the best possible compromise, but nobody can afford to give enough of a shit to actually put up a fight, so it just turns into an infinite recursion of lazy fake-out maneuvers.