FWIW that's also how languages work that do have an academy. The academy may be a participant in the process but they don't control it, that's basically just a relic of before we understood how languages work.
> that's basically just a relic of before we understood how languages work
Relics that unfortunately maintain significant influence in at least France and Germany.
When I grew up and was just learning to write, orthography was "revamped" by literal committee, in some cases even going so far as deriving a new spelling via false etymologies.
It wasn't really a big deal for me practically, but it just seems bizarre.
