> I'm not quite ready to allow my cynicism to let me think it is an intentional feature

Hanlon's razor is hinted at in the later discussion, i.e.

"never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence" (at least, both the words incompetence and malice appear under discussion)

But, I prefer to apply a different rule-of-thumb:

"incompetence is strongly equivalent to malice"