Why don't *all* widgets allow selection/resize?

Is it just laziness on the part of coders (or maybe contempt for the user?) that results in so many of the widgets/dialogs boxes presented on-screen refusing to allow selection of their contents for cut'n'paste, and they can't be resized? This is most common in Microsoft products where idiotically postage-stamp sized windows display vitally important info that can only be seen (but never copied!) if you scroll horizontally across their 1-inch width columns. This unfortunate condition is also seen in Mac and Linux; is it the fault of the development tools/libraries or do the devs just hate us that much?