should be spending their time improving various systems to enable people to work on more important work. Universal healthcare, improved child care accessibility, affordable housing, anything you can think of that is an enabler of talent to do more than survive vs thrive
exactly that. when i see a call for people to do more important work, this is the kind of stuff i think of. things that society actually needs.
And unfortunately in North America teachers and nurses are leaving their professions. I don't see any migration of "apparent altruists" like OP filling in those vacancies!
one of the important areas of work is education, and i don't mean STEM, but teaching people how to talk to each other and learn what their community needs, so that they are going to be willing to invest in that area and enable these jobs with actually sufficient pay and acceptable working conditions.
exactly that. when i see a call for people to do more important work, this is the kind of stuff i think of. things that society actually needs.