The point is that the people on the ground bring a whole lot of values and knowledge to bear upon their decisions and evaluations which those outside the situation do not perceive. Economists essentially see society as a self correcting homeostatic mechanism such as those which maintain body heat or blood sugar levels in the human body. The human body is probably our most appropriate analogy, since it, too, is immensely complex and has a variety of decision making mechanisms in addition to the conscious ones. But human society is not characterised by the negative feedback of homeostasis, but by positive feedback. This results in yet more people trying to send their children there.
Society is also a probabilistic rather than a deterministic system.
It is an increase in the probability of certain actions for which we try, not a totally determined outcome. Intelligent decision making in our society needs mechanisms which produce adaptive decisions and which is capable of further change. We need structures capable of rapid response, we need opportunities to review outcomes, procedures and even decision criteria themselves. There is no ready made blueprint, but we need a sensible model of our situation in order to address that lack. The ideas outlined above are offered as part of the toolkit that will enable us to do so.