I don't necessarily disagree about those things being sad/scary/pathetic. But these things cost money. Taxpayers are generally averse to spending money on long

I don't necessarily disagree about those things being sad/scary/pathetic. But these things cost money. Taxpayers are generally averse to spending money on long term prevention. Something that people consider an "expensive boondoggle" and refuse to pay for before an incident tends to become "shame on you for not doing your job" right after. Do you remember after the BP spill how people were shocked -- shocked! -- that the government did not have deep sea oil rig submersibles and that we had to rely on BP's resources? This type of thinking blew my mind. Who on earth would have supported paying for deep sea utility submersibles for some "black swan" oil spill before this incident happened? And the funny part is, now that it's over and everybody has moved on, they probably still wouldn't. So back to the FAA... how are we going to pay for top tier engineering talent in the kinds of numbers required to check these components at the level of detail we might wish? TL;DR: proper oversight costs money.