>My disagreement lies in the fact that you've described the problem, but are proposing that some software (SELinux) that fails to solve the problem is somehow good.
My opinion is that there's a cultural and policy problem and you're simply not going to solve it with technology. I don't think SE Linux is bad, it just isn't the answer here. One (clearly not the only) main reasons people just run a bunch of software they don't understand is due to expectations in productivity. In an idealistic world with caution built in, we are willing to sacrifice some productivity for security, stability, understanding, etc. I think many engineers like these ideas because they like to work with and build solid systems they understand very well--otherwise they wouldn't be practicing any form of engineering.
What we instead have is a world of engineering with no sort of guard rails. Unlike Civil Engineering, there's no licensing, no sorts of inspections, no oversight, liability is completepy waived in a 300 page agreement people just click through, etc. Even when things go horribly wrong (e.g. Equifax) the repercussions are limited. We see abuse in other engineering fields where actual life and death are factors and they're still just amortized in a cost analysis.
Ultimately though engineers simply don't lead the world (and arguably,
maybe they shouldn't) , people with wealth lead the world (arguably, they shouldn't either) because it underpins pretty much all other systems anymore. As such, productivity is always prioritized over safety and security. This issue isn't limited to software, it happens everywhere almost ubiquitously at this point. Software is one of those areas where most people just care less, so you can get away with more and more of this. The issue is that I believe we're building a house of cards that will be difficult to revert to a reasonably stable state once it finally collapses.