"There's equivocation in that statement; what market efficiency is and what people generally mean by efficiency are not the same thing"
True, but: it's no coincidence that the terms are used for different things. What we really care about as humans is "market efficiency" in the ordinary English sense of the word. That's really hard to define, though, so economists redefine it in a very precise, technical, and yes, 'boring' statement. Now it is easier to see if we have it, but also not very useful. However, it can still be used to argue that any intervention in the market will be a mistake. The confusion about what the term "market efficiency" means is not just a coincidence. Redefine it as something easily proven, and then let people mistake that for a proof of what they actually care about, and you get the same political/lobbying result as the (rather more difficult, perhaps impossible) task of proving that markets are efficient in the way we actually care about as humans, rather than just economists.
The definition is easy: by market efficiency, people mean time (labor market being the only market Adam Smith concerned himself and invisible hand being a reference to how the people themselves will tacitly protect their own interests).
And right now, the sense is that we're spending a lot of our time in jobs that overwhelmingly benefit a rich minority, which is not time spent well it.
When our ability to focus on self-preservation is being expropriated, people revolt
This interpretation isn't even up for debate, IMO. It's been investigated by biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, medical doctors, philosophers, logicians, mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists.
A curious omission: economists. Very few of re-known willfully admit their own field is being twisted into undermining the majority for the minority.
True, but: it's no coincidence that the terms are used for different things. What we really care about as humans is "market efficiency" in the ordinary English sense of the word. That's really hard to define, though, so economists redefine it in a very precise, technical, and yes, 'boring' statement. Now it is easier to see if we have it, but also not very useful. However, it can still be used to argue that any intervention in the market will be a mistake. The confusion about what the term "market efficiency" means is not just a coincidence. Redefine it as something easily proven, and then let people mistake that for a proof of what they actually care about, and you get the same political/lobbying result as the (rather more difficult, perhaps impossible) task of proving that markets are efficient in the way we actually care about as humans, rather than just economists.