I honestly think there are some kind of laws of physics at play here... in the statistical limit of the massively participatory interaction of engineers, there is some kind of least action principle where the system is seeking lower energy (i.e. less code complexity, better foundations, etc), but only locally. The path towards a radically better foundation for the entire industry is outside of the "energy well" that it is currently in---at least that's how I see it. I feel like that's why we see more things like elegant scripting languages rather than ground-up reimaginings of computing itself.
There is a concept of the hourglass model [0] of internet protocols, where IP sits at the waist. I believe that similar things are probably true in any "stack" based structure, such as computing, where the protocol at the waist has the most staying power (which at the current moment could be e.g. x86, or something) because it's essentially the universal translation layer that enables all the language protocols built above it to be agnostic to all the transport protocols below it. So, I see it as an open question as to what the best way to affect change in a situation like this is. I'm interested in if anyone else has any thoughts along these lines.