It's tough because I think in some cases there really are new things that can be done, where the volume of money in question makes it logical to start over— thinking of the Gates foundation trying to tackle malaria, or address sanitation issues around toilets.

But education? Inequality? These aren't ones where some random person who hasn't been thinking about it for decades is going to come up with a radically new approach.

Even the Gates foundation itself wasted quite a bit of money in funding approaches to education (like "small schools") that just didn't yield good outcomes, and were sometimes harmful.

Yeah, that was one of the ones I was thinking of, I just couldn't remember the details— here it is for anyone else out of the loop:

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/09/th...