Central to your argument is the following claim:

people with generic skills should be outcompeted by people with generic AND specialist skills

but I don't think you've given it enough support to justify an accusation of corruption against any society in which people with "generic skills" are very successful. Isn't it plausible (1) that the best person to run an organization (or some department of one) might be someone who has some understanding of all the things their underlings are doing, and (2) that this will often come at the cost of not getting so expert in any single area (or, having formerly been an expert specialist, neglecting those skills in favour of learning everyone else's a bit), and (3) that the people who run organizations may be quite handsomely paid for doing it?

(To put it differently: in some contexts being a really good generalist may be a valuable specialist skill.)