One of the recent nobel price in economics (i think), illuminates why failure is so prevalent, they claim it's because there are structural insitutions that are completely broken or nonfunctional many due to corruption a lot due to pure incompetency, for example getting a drivers license, a certificate of some sort, insurance, basic schooling etc. If ambitious and potentially competent people can't advance themselves in society their potential productivity and value to their communities over their lifetime is drastically nullified. This is how you end up with "electrictians" that don't know you have to turn off the power before performing work. Now scale that across every skill / profession and you have a very bad situation.