Good points, it makes you wonder how many day to day things could have vastly improved user experience if government efforts were targeted at underlying problems instead of symptoms (borrowing your definitions of those two things).

But plastics recycling comes to mind as a bit of a counter example, where all the effort has been put on dealing with the end problem, when perhaps they should be targeting the symptom (regulating unnecessary plastics and packaging, and taxing the producers instead of the consumers). Currently plastic producers have incentive to generate more plastics, and consumers are left trying to deal with the waste.