I haven't read the book, but I wholeheartedly agree with analysis of other systems - both those that work and why, and those that don't and why - over trying to invent new ones. There are hundreds of implementations of all kinds of systems - education, justice, transport, healthcare, politics. Why should we limit ourselves to learning from just one system, the one we've implemented? And why should we limit ourselves to "That system works well. Let's copy it" when we could be asking why those systems work well, and what aspects we should use?

From my perspective in the UK, we seem to have this obsession with trying to invent everything ourselves instead of looking (primarily at the continent, but also elsewhere) at what other countries have tried and trying to apply what works while being appropriate to our context here. You see it with healthcare, justice (people say that we should copy Scandinavia, but there's never any more analysis), education (we seem to believe our system is the only one there ever has been or ever could be), and so many other places.

And there seems to be this fallacy that because somebody offers excellent critique of a system their solutions are automatically at that level of excellence. You can see it in this thread: We all agree that prisons, particularly in the US, have a lot of problems - and solutions are presented without any regard for if they're actually any good.

Thank you for the book recommendation. I've added it to my reading list - I doubt I'll agree with it, but it seems to be an interesting perspective.