Hmmm... I'll have a go. One response is that the "fully general counter argument" is a true counter argument. You just used a clever rhetorical trick to stop us noticing that.

If what you are calling "efficiency" is not working for you, then you are - ahem - just not being very efficient! More revealingly, you have become fixated on the "forms" of efficiency (the metrics and tick boxes) and have lost track of the substance (adopting methods which take you closer to your true goals, rather than away from them). So you have steelmanned a criticism of formal efficiency, but not of actual efficiency.