You're presuming-- and you're right-- that politicians don't actually care about fixing things, but about improving their election results. They are self inter

You're presuming-- and you're right-- that politicians don't actually care about fixing things, but about improving their election results. They are self interested. This is a classic example of the Principle Agent problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem And it exists not just at the level of politicians, I've seen school administrators and teachers-- both of whome I genuinely believe want nothing more than to help the kids under their charge, compromise that principle because it benefits themselves. They're not even aware they are doing it. So, fundamentally ,the incentives are not aligned with the outcome that benefits society. Look at fruit at your grocery store. The incentives there are aligned, to a point. Your store gets a very healthy supply of clean, generally safe bananas, apples, oranges and the like. They are shipped across the globe to get you the best, biggest, perfect looking versions of those fruit. The main incentive needed was to deliver food that would not kill you that was safe to eat, and that incentive was met. When it comes to schools, even the good ones are not delivering a good education. For instance, almost no high schools deliver the tools and skills one needs to be in the workforce. This is totally possible, but the administration of these schools is not focused on education but state requirements. Now the fruit delivered to your grocer is also more sweet and sugary than these same fruits were centuries ago because they've bred them to please the customer, and that has some society issues that need to be addressed (being "healthy" and eating apples and bananas is too much like eating sugary snacks these days)... but at least we have a choice. If we all only shopped at organic or old style fruit stands the market would shift. With education we have no choice. You can't chose where to send your kid and you can't even really make an impact on the system because there are so many entrenched interests. I remember reading about one scandinavian school system (I think?) that had much better outcomes for less money by simply attaching the money to the students. The schools and the money were state run, but the parents decided which school their kids went to. Just that change, caused the schools to compete for students because they wanted the money to grow, and to do that they had to convince their parents that they were delivering a good education. The incentives were aligned.