There is no need for apprenticeships. The labor glut makes it easy to pick the cogs who trained themselves and avoid the useless cogs that didn't train themselves at all or in the wrong subject. Useless cogs aren't even a drag for the private sector, they actually fuel it through student debt.

If one were to create a strawman of the most capitalist, greedy and shortsighted kind then there would be nothing more beautiful to that strawman than consumption without income, because it allows wealth inequality to grow without hitting macroeconomic limits that would otherwise prevent the relative wealth of the strawman to grow beyond a certain point.

You're right that there is no need for more central control but how else do you get out of this trap?