I don't agree.
For example, healthcare in the US is screwed up partially because during WW2, the US government made corporations adhere to a salary cap to prevent war millionaires. Companies responded by trying to attract workers using free health insurance instead. So now we have a tradition of providing health insurance along with employment, and things are awkward for freelancers and entrepreneurs.
Housing is screwed up partially because of government policies to encourage homeownership. The problem is that as homeowners become a constituency, they're incentivized to maintain the prices of their homes (one of their most valuable assets), so they vote for policies that prevent the construction of new homes (reducing supply of housing helps their homes maintain their value).
The US itself was founded partially because of policy problems in Great Britain. And despite the flaws listed above, as a nation it's been incredibly successful.
I don't think policy development is fundamentally different from technological development. It just has a slower cycle of trial/error/theory creation. You might as well look at an early car, observe its unreliability, and say "The fundamental failure of the horseless carriage is that its unreliability is an intrinsic problem of thermodynamics"