I feel like the iterated prisoner's dilemma is part of it too -- if you let someone off the hook repeatedly for defecting, you just enable them to continue defecting.

Or somewhat related, the "if you touch it you own it" problem.

So to overcome this learned helplessness effect, we'd need a good strategy to prevent the deterioration of duty of whoever is "supposed" to be fixing a problem, and/or a way to cut out the derelicts entirely.