Developer and corporate status games select for political skill and self-indulgent overcomplexity, with added spice from dark patterns. There’s no reward for UI/UX/internal simplicity and elegance.

The culture at some companies would have been hugely improved with a few literal angry-users-with-pitchforks moments.

Then why do it? I like a good UX just as much as you, and I value simplicity, but people just want "good enough". And that is all there is to it.

I think you've built a strawman. People who use computers to get shit done might pay lip service to things looking good, but at the end of the day they want a tool that does the job without a lot of bullshit. To the extent that the kind of person you're talking about exists, they are consumers who live in tablet land and should be ignored for desktop/workstation use cases.