most people are pretty average (tautologically so), and average is pretty unimpressive against the pace at which technology (in the broad sense) has changed and

most people are pretty average (tautologically so), and average is pretty unimpressive against the pace at which technology (in the broad sense) has changed and knowledge has so rapidly expanded in the past century or two (which is not to say that we're all that much more advanced yet against the backdrop of everything we could ever collectively know). as such, and compounded by sociopolitical contentions, most people are barely functional in their jobs, let alone adequate or good. that specifically includes so-called "experts", who tend to be further out on the edge nodes of our collective tree of knowledge and therefore more vulnerable to rising to your level of incompetence. once at that level, the competiton turns toward signaling your competence, rather than working on becoming more competent, since that's harder and less socially rewarding. we need nothing short of a cultural shift toward incentivizing real progress and productivity, and valuing real knowledge rather than education, which we only had for a fleeting moment in the US (middle of last century), that only comes from really constraining markets toward both fairness and risk tolerance. we lost our way when we loosened our belt in that regard (for instance, we now instead reward to act of having capital rather than deploying it strategically).