Mancur Olson made a similar point in his 1984 book The Rise and Decline of Nations. His argument is that as time goes on, special interests and entrenched bureaucracies take what was a simpler system and load it up with exceptions and complexity. The more complex they become, the less capable of collective action they become, leading to overall paralysis.

This is an extension of his argument from his Nobel Prize–winning 1971 book The Logic of Collective Action.