IMO the cascade is the exact problem with CSS. It worked fine when all it was dealing with was super simple documents with a few rules here and there, as soon as we started making applications the cascade causes endless headaches, and most modern methods of handling CSS like modules or libraries like Tailwind are made specifically to avoid cascade/specificity issues. Conceptually CSS is not really all that complicated, but in practice when you have dozens or even hundreds of CSS files for an entire app, it simply becomes a herculean nightmare to deal with and to wrap your head around.
As someone who works with many dozens of CSS files each day, I can say the problem isn't CSS. It's devs who are too lazy to document their work.
If everyone is working from the same spec/reference, it's fine, and you get consistent, reliable results.
When devs have to stumble around in the dark and end up reinventing the wheel every few months, that's when things go badly.
> devs who are too lazy to document their work
That's as bad a complaint as the one about cascading.
Your rules should be close to the object that uses them. It's really bad that CSS only supports global rules, and that is not a fault of the developers writing those rules.
When the !important comes out it's all over