It's the money, stupid!
So many of the the issues described can be traced back to a simple source: Money.
Either you have people who are too interested in making money for themselves and their mates to worry about the effects of what they're doing or there are the people who want to and are trying to sort out the problems, but who are told "that's too expensive, do what you can with half the money and, fingers crossed, it will all work out".
Eventually risky practices will be fixed, but usually only after something has gone so catastrophically wrong that they cannot be ignored any more and then, suddenly, money is no object in rectifying them.
Of course only *those* particular problems are fixed, it would be too expensive to sort out *all* the issues (at least until they lead to another disaster...)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
