Want Something Fixed? Make Sure Important People Have Skin In the Game

What do bad schools and the Iraq war have in common with each other? Neither gets fixed properly because important people have no skin in the game.

1) Because the elites and their kids friends mostly do not go to public schools, almost no one they know or care about is getting a lousy education because of public schools
2) Because almost no one they care about is getting a lousy education in public schools, it is not that urgent to them to fix public schools.

This is similiar to the reason the Iraq war did not get stopped:

1) Because the elites and their kids/friends mostly do not serve in the military, almost no one they know or care about is/was getting killed or maimed in Iraq.
2) Because almost no one they care about was/is getting killed in Iraq, the elites did not care enough to stop the Iraq war from going on for years and years.

Principle: when elites are not effected by a problem they have a lot less incentive to fix the problem.

Solution: don't let elites opt out of things like military service and public schools if you want problems with both (illegal wars, not enough body armor, bad schools) to be dealt with properly and in a timely manner.
http://firedoglake.com/2008/12/07/want-something-fixed-make-sure-important-people-have-skin-in-the-game/

In general, I believe that's true.

we have to keep everyone invested in this program w. something to gain

we go to means testing and it goes the way of the public schools (when i was a child, our public schools were the envy of the world, hard to believe it now!)