I haven't hand-waved anything away. I said there are cases where the people who do have skin in the game can't work things out among themselves. What you're describing is one case of that--those people can't even come to agreement about whether something needs to be done or not.
I did qualify my statement with the caveat that whether people looking in from the outside, who don't have skin in the game, think there's a problem that the people who do have skin in the game can't resolve among themselves, doesn't always match whether there actually is such a problem (a caveat which I could argue that you have hand-waved away). But I am not saying that all cases are like that.
What I am saying is that, even in the cases that aren't like that, the cases where the people who do have skin in the game really can't resolve a problem by working among themselves, that does not mean that reformers coming in from outside can do any better. I think such outside interventions, through human history, have a very poor track record of working. A quick summary of my point about conservatives and reformers would then be that conservatives recognize this unpleasant truth of human history, whereas reformers don't acknowledge it and are way, way too eager to make such interventions, and end up making things even worse.
I did qualify my statement with the caveat that whether people looking in from the outside, who don't have skin in the game, think there's a problem that the people who do have skin in the game can't resolve among themselves, doesn't always match whether there actually is such a problem (a caveat which I could argue that you have hand-waved away). But I am not saying that all cases are like that.
What I am saying is that, even in the cases that aren't like that, the cases where the people who do have skin in the game really can't resolve a problem by working among themselves, that does not mean that reformers coming in from outside can do any better. I think such outside interventions, through human history, have a very poor track record of working. A quick summary of my point about conservatives and reformers would then be that conservatives recognize this unpleasant truth of human history, whereas reformers don't acknowledge it and are way, way too eager to make such interventions, and end up making things even worse.