Why is producing all that waste and complexity necessary in the first place? We often get distracted by benefits and forget to look at the costs. And we often

Why is producing all that waste and complexity necessary in the first place? We often get distracted by benefits and forget to look at the costs. And we often overdo things to a degree where previous wisdom has to be re-discovered again and again. Having experienced a couple of hype cycles, I learned that the sensible thing is to narrow down what the new thing is useful for specifically. And all that's assuming that the prediction holds. I don't see any clear signs of whether the usefulness and precision is primarily a quantitative or qualitative issue.