Honestly, your second to last sentence is literally the kind of thing I hate hearing most from non-lawyers; the whole "if the legislature were just smarter" thing is just a weird pie-in-the-sky concept that is more-or-less like saying "the world would be better if CEOs were less greedy."

Like, yes, but it's not very likely to happen and it's not a particularly horrible thing if it doesn't; the law is slow and little-c conservative and you're just expecting it to be something it MOST often just ain't.