Most of English's inconsistent spelling came about from (sometimes incomplete) pronunciation shifts. Now knight and night are homophones where they once weren't, and while sky still rhymes with by, it no longer rhymes with archery. Fixing this is difficult, not just because people are resistant to change, but also because the variations in accents.

However, we're also introducing a lot of new inconsistencies due to a relatively recent shift to adopting foreign words without changing the spelling or pronunciation as we would have in the past - something no other language does. This forces English readers to learn multiple foreign orthographies and English's to read English.

The British are sometimes better about it. They see the word "jalapeno" or "tortilla" and pronounce it like you'd expect (and get mocked for it) with English's orthography, as opposed to forcing everyone to use Spanish orthography to pronounce them halapenyo and tortiya.

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling, sometimes attributed to Mark Twain:

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

English spelling irregularity serves a functional role similar to Japanese kanji. It distinguishes homophones (e.g., night and knight) and evinces the shared meaning of words which have the same root with different pronunciations (e.g., sign and signature). Regularizing the spelling would make the language harder to read for those fluent in it, even for a hypothetical population who learned the reformed spelling from early childhood.

Perhaps interestingly, China did two rounds of simplifying Chinese characters. The first one was well received, but the second one[0] fell out of favor and was rescinded, because it was making up a bunch of new characters (in English that would be equivalent to making up new words). People don't want to remember new words.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters#...