No country is totally free from corruption and has a perfect education system.
However, on corruption, the wealthier parts of Europe have marginalised it to the extent that it's not holding the economy back much.
We certainly don't see the police running illegal businesses, or going around collecting bribes so openly.
If any western European army run a commercial boxing stadium AND held an illegal event which led to mass COVID infections, the independent media would pretty much force the government into an independent enquiry.
People don't expect to pay bribes.
Parts of eastern Europe and Italy have much more corruption of course.
I understood that North America, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore are not exactly held back by corruption either.
Thailand probably has a lot of catching up to do with other Asian countries, such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
Whilst education might vary from country to country, Thailand does not score particularly highly on the education scores I do see.
I would still argue that corruption is the number 1 thing stopping Thailand from developing and education is the number 2.
Not that it's my problem to worry about.
One side effect of slow development is affordable money boys (even if many of them come from even more corrupt countries to the east, west and north of Thailand).
A free press is one of the things that should help to expose corruption & keep the government on it's toes. Actually, the Bangkok Post is regularly critical of the government, so I would be intrigued to know if the Thai language newspapers are the same.