I was trying to find a way to say the same thing but you worded it way better than I could.

I think this series was definitely something that influenced young me towards leftism for the reasons you described. It was the first series I read where the adults were all shown to be faking their way through life and all the bureaucrats had no idea how to run the system. Contrast it to a real lib book like Harry Potter where the solution at the end is Harry becomes a good cop to fix all the problems.