We try to :-). Specifically, there are designs underway to implement e.g. hyper operators - those things that apply an operator to an array of values, irrespective of order - by SIMD instructions on the hardware level. If you're interested you're very welcome to come and check it out.
[edit] - there is also some progress in speeding up list operations, because as it turns out making all lists lazy is not a really good way to do fast list computations. This is known as the 'Great List Refactor' (GLR) in perl6 circles, and spoken of with awe :-)
