Even in this description you use the words "you realize" and "become wiser" and then describe it as "a waste". It's not a waste, it's just the cost of education.

As the saying goes: "good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions". It would be great if we could all come out of the womb with enough education and experience to function as responsible adults in modern society, but we don't. Society (rightfully) allows people some leeway in doing dumb shit so that they can learn firsthand why it's dumb.

The experience is absolutely not a waste, don't get me wrong. What I'm calling a waste are the time and resources spent undoing and redoing everything.

It's all cute if this just happens during our childhood years, where most actions hold no real consequence. It's when this extends into the real world with very real consequences that it gets really wasteful.

Well we do this for many situations where it does actually matter. Drivers license requirements force people to "do it right" the first time, you can't (legally) fuck around driving a car on public roads until you eventually figure it out. Airline pilots and nuclear power plant operators have even stricter requirements.

Licensing and training has a very real cost as well of course, and for many topics the cost of forcing everyone to get a license would outstrip the benefits. So you either have to spend on training, or you have to spend to fix the mistakes of untrained people, or a mix of both. There is no way to bring the waste to zero.

I'll be glad to pillage your stagnant empire meanwhile :)

You forget one thing ... You also discover the 20% of manure that isn't true, or doesn't apply to you.