If you need lawyers, it's all gone bad.

Interesting comparisons can be drawn between social and technological systems:

As technology evolves, a technological device gets simpler by time. Why is that? The purpose of the device is usually clearly defined; new technologies and new understandings enable the production and use of the device to be more streamlined and more cost-effective.

Simply said, with more research we find the simplest and easiest way to achieve the same result.

A social system based on power over others doesn't have a clearly defined purpose visible to others. Such a system usually has a core purpose (to funnel power to the top of the hierarchy) and a fake purpose (to mask the core purpose before others).

Opposed to technological systems, social systems like these grow less simple by time; the prevention of visibility demands it. As the masking function grows more and more bulky and useless, sooner or later it comes in conflict with the core purpose of the system, and at that time it falls apart.

The difference between a classical technological system and a social system based on power over others is simply visibility: a technological device can be acquired and dismantled to see how it works - a social system cannot.

There is system transparency in the first case - there is no system transparency in the second.

Of course, social systems too can be built on transparency.

Even more interesting is that technological systems can manifest the symptoms of corrupt social structures. How is it possible?

Newer technological advancements are less and less transparent: although you can dismantle a microchip with a sledgehammer, presumably you won't learn much from it.

Especially with proprietary software technology (where you can't peek inside to see how it works, due to technological and legal limits) visibility is vastly disrupted, and as in corrupt social systems, it is used to funnel power/attention/information to those who control it.

Transparency is the first step to obtain clarity.