"the reality is actually much more horrifying. The people running the show aren't evil geniuses....they are just as stupid as the rest of us."

Yep, that is more horrifying to a lot of people who want experts to do their thinking for them.

So most of the population then. You can't avoid stupidity.

What kills me about this sort of thing is how easily a system of (let's give them the benefit of the doubt) individually intelligent actors develops catastrophic emergent behaviors. Even if each person involved makes savvy decisions, if the resultant whole is unstable then everyone is still screwed.

...because hardly anyone has the big picture. this works with ant colonies because they had time to evolve their local decision making. it doesn't work with human economy.