https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Sum-Society-Distribution-Possibi...
talks about numerous problems we experience today, such as windfall profits in the petroleum industry, but the most interesting bit in my mind was the fall of the steel industry in the US which based on the Open Hearth Furnace and the Bessmer process. Japan and Germany had there obsolete factories blown up so they switched to the newly developed Basic Oxygen process which was faster, cheaper and produced superior steel. US Steel lobbied to get protectionism, but this had a negative effect on other parts of US industry. For instance US automakers were making expensive and inferior cars out of expensive and inferior steel.
The problem wasn't that the US Steel industry had to invest in new steelmaking capacity, but rather it had to disinvest in the old technology because so long as it could make profits without investing it wouldn't invest. This character played a role in it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife
and he later got famous for bankrolling a campaign to harry Bill Clinton when he was in office. Oddly Bill Clinton became friends with RMS later because RMS let him "triangulate", so long as he could keep his head above water he could do nothing for leftists and have them blame the Republicans and not Clinton.
If the phone lines just disappeared it would be perfectly profitable to roll out a fiber network, but so long as the copper wires exist phone companies have every reason to postpone copper retirement indefinitely.
A "department of legitimacy" would have to give out a lot of tough love and crack down on delegitimizing behavior, that's for sure.
As case studies I would point out: (1) a sector of Republicans who pursue one kind of legitimacy, "sticking to their guns" and posturing with extreme positions (e.g. they feel like they have at least do something to buy the perception of legitimacy of somebody) and (2) Democrats who take legitimacy for granted (I'm Hillary Clinton, of course I am legitimate). In Hillary's case there was that experience of being on the receiving end of Richard Mellon Scaife's (oddly an unnamed villain in https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Sum-Society-Distribution-Possibi...) war against her husband which convinced her that any illegitimacy perceptions were part of a "vast right wing conspiracy" thus nobody could have convinced her that she could have changed her behavior and won in 2016.