Through government financed student loans, we make money available for any sort of educational pursuit; and unlike a loan for, say, opening a new restaurant, no business plan or market research is needed to convince a banker that the venture is a sound one.
So, the reason this is happening in a "supposedly rational, maximally efficient — or close offer — market economy" is contained in the first word of the description: supposedly.
In truth, government loans distort and destroy a market economy. Cheap credit undermines rational planning.
And generally, the choice of education seems to lag behind what's actually in demand, even worldwide.
If there was no free money sloshing around, people would have to do a proper cash flow analysis and look at supply and demand before being able to invest their time in degrees that don’t have ROI.
Same thing happened with pharmacy school, and now there’s tons of pharmacists making very little money for exposing themselves to lots of liability in fast food working conditions.
So getting a degree is a gamble, because you either come out ahead or you get hobbled by it for the rest of your life. Whereas if you did indeed get free money to get a degree it would eliminate the hobble and produce a class of well-educated people who could afford to work for PD wages.
It's a gamble that the government offers to you even when it knows you can't meaningfully pay the loan back.
Isn't there any regulatory body which controls the number of law degrees awarded annually, like there is for doctors?
IN LAW {bar exams + prestigious law firms} ~ IN MEDICINE {board exams + specialty board residency placements}
It also differentiates the bar vs. board exams. You can't practice medicine without certification, but there are plenty of lawyers doing law without a bar association, it only constrains you from doing certain types of work.
It’s as Churchill said of Democracy, it’s the worst form of government we’ve come up with, except for all the others. Fortunately in a Democracy we have the freedoms to discuss, identify and agree solutions to these problems. These solutions will probably lead to more problems. Rinse and repeat.
Why is the US producing 25,000 more lawyers than it needs?
Why is this happening in a supposedly rational maximally efficient - or close offer - market economy?
The simple answer is because someone else profits hugely from the money they pay for training. Which in turn is a symptom of an extractive economy, not a productive economy.
A productive economy would do a much better job of allocating talent to social requirements. But an extractive economy is optimised for short-term gain of a small overclass - not the medium/long-term opportunity-growth of a strategically generative economy.