This is a conundrum humanity must address if we’re to survive over the long term, IMO.
Greed is humanity's greatest weakness. When faced with the opportunity of unimaginable wealth, most people would sacrifice their ethics and morals, assuming they had any to begin with.
I don’t think they are inherently ethical, but they were young and naive with good intentions (Do No Evil, and all that). The position they put forward is ethical. But that youthful naivety is what the less-ethical (though still quite intelligent, as you point out) take advantage of.
Further, again as you said, greed is at the root of it.
Hopefully that clarifies my point?
Who's to say that this is not actually an evolutionary adaptation that allows the more ruthlessly led tribes to dominate their enemies? The stat about 1/25 of individuals being sociopaths is very telling
DNA isn't destiny.
That's precisely how we've changed so drastically is an evolutionary blink of an eye.
And now, our cultural evolution has reached the point where we're even able to change our own genetics with planning and foresight in a single generation. So it seems to me that the blind watchmaker is essentially irrelevant now.