Some poor fucking secretary has to read all that shit so that their boss can be advised whether the application is compliant. It won't actually be analyzed unless those sections are sub-par at which point bickering over them becomes a lever the government can pull to extract more flesh. The applicant is forced to go back and say "well we'll hire a minority" or whatever to shore up that section.

On a society level I think everyone realizes the ship is sinking and just looting everything they can before running for the lifeboats.

Bureaucracies became a spoils system. In the 60s the civil rights movement would boycott companies and then demand favors. Minority groups realized the moral weakness of western society and are just in it to loot whatever they can. For them the 350 pages of spoils are very important.