Most of humanity is mediocre. Very few people are excellent. You're response of "touch luck, just be better" to a population with a mean IQ of 100 will lead to pitchforks in the streets.
A shocking number of people are so well below mediocre that its kind of amazing how okayish we get by even pre AI. Makes me thing there is more robustness than you might expect given terrible numbers.
For example what seemed crazy to me that as a country Greece somehow had and still has ~half of their households *primary* source of income being pensions.
