Every culture has also had older people stepping down at some point to let fresh blood take the charge and carry the burden. In Western societies we don't see that so much anymore. Instead it seems the old prefer to see things rot than to let younger people take over. With land, farms, houses, businesses, etc.
If younger people got an honest chance all would benefit, including the old. Instead young people are mostly seen as people to exploit or ignore.
It is not difficult to look up history. The current old people who hold power in small and in large, when you look up their history, they all got help to start their ventures. Very few of them are self made, so why the act?
>We've just made the system so efficient
It's only efficient at robbing the young.
One half of this social contract, the young-giving-to-old, was formalized (and forced) while the other half, old-building-for-young, was utterly abandoned. There's a great meme about this: "no take, only throw!"[0]
Eating all the seed corn[1] will eventually lead to famine.
[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/no-take-only-throw
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eat_one%27s_seed_corn#English