Part of me thinks it's a feature and not a bug. The politicians are artificially creating jobs and getting a reliable source of votes by doing so. And there are also downstream jobs from supporting these laws.

For instance you'll notice most Tesla cars have a sticker on them that says "Access Ok, California Clean Air Vehicle" https://cleanvehiclerebate.org/eng/ev/incentives/hov-lane-ac...

To me it's dumb that the government needs to issue a sticker to know which cars are EV's or Clean Air vehicles. Wouldn't it be more simple to just know that Tesla's and Toyota Prius's are clean air cars than to require people to put stickers on their bumpers that expire every four years in order to get prime parking spaces and HOV access? Additionally, there's a bunch of paperwork involved and qualification processes based on income and other things https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-registration/license-p...

I'm sure that this bass-ackwards system provides plenty of work though.