This is exactly the attitude that creates large unmaintainable codebases that are layers of hacks upon hacks. There is an alternative and that is to hire people to do the job that are competent in wrangling complexity and refactoring the system in question.
No, that's not the case at all. You need buy in from interested parties, which you don't have in politics, and if you have a large unmaintainable codebase, you probably don't have from the people in charge.
