Ah yes, Hanlon’s razor. Genuinely a great one to keep in mind at all times, along with it’s corollary Clarke’s law: “Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.”

But in this particular case I think we need the much less frequently cited version by Douglas Hubbard: “Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system.”