What I’m saying is that sure, I think I agree with GP that there is much getting in the way of us doing more with less. Namely inefficient, greed, and inertia. But how do we get out of this trap?
Put the metaphorical oxygen mask on yourself first before you try to help others, and then, if you so choose and are able, defend and empower others as your sphere of influence (a function of time and resources itself) grows. Defend and empower the human, broadly speaking.
For a list:
* Shift some of the tax burden to profits and rent-seeking, and away from income.
* Front-load elder care costs by setting aside a bigger share of productive work done today for pensions.
* Aggressively reduce costs and waste across the economy. Cap student loan amounts. Mandate what % of tuition has to go towards instruction. Make medical school free, make doctors pay it off through X,000 hours of service.
* Deal with supply shortages for inelastic goods. Housing is a major one. Tax-advantage denser developments. Or turn cities/states/provinces into developers themselves.
* Fix low-hanging fruit in public health. Make vaccination free. We lose more economic output in sick days than we do from people not getting a flu jab.
* Fix waste in medical-adjacent spaces. Mandate that eye exams provide a pupil distance measurement. There should be no reason for why I can't get an eye exam, and then directly plug those numbers into an online glasses retailer, that will ship me a pair for $30.
* Wild-ass stretch goal: Make public transit/biking/walking/scooting preferable to car ownership wherever feasible. The societal cost of universal car ownership is huge, even if we only measure in dollars, and disregard all the other negative externalities.
* Reduce spend on zero-sum and negative-sum industries: Ban gambling, tobacco, alcohol advertising.
Or, you know, if you don't like any of these active-involvement ideas, another alternative is to shrug your shoulders and pray that the free market will sort things out before you get bread riots and a revolution.
Or, shrug your shoulders and just import more young immigrants. Preferably with skills that we need, other countries can spend their resources on training their youth, and we'd poach them once they are in their prime productive years.
All of the active-involvement ideas come down to 'There's a pit somewhere in our economy that we shovel endless amounts of money into, that is not efficient at producing material goods that people need to live. What can we do to reduce the fraction of the economy that is wasted in them?'