I wouldn’t say “want” so much as “it’s the worst except for all the others”.

Legal systems are like code, except interpreted by humans and “common sense” instead of compilers — we just don’t have a way to make it simultaneously easy to understand (legalese), hacker-proof (legal loopholes), and future-proof (implications of new tech).

Governments do try to clear out old laws and amend the ones they want to keep, but it looks like it’s as hard for them as preventing databases from leaking is for us.