I think you are experiencing delusions of grandeur - a delusion (common in paranoia) that you are much greater and more powerful and influential than you really are. floor traders and retail traders have no effect on the price of stocks, commodities especially in the money laundering exchanges.
One of the best descriptions I read in a while. Although I wouldn't be so sure about that last part. You might have forgot about China and their amassment of commodities. You might have forgot about Western led taking down of Gaddafi (for oil). And most importantly you might have forgot about monetary easing, in which case buying "real" stuff made more sense. Besides Arab Spring was rise against regimes.
Central banks and owners of assets like land and owners of gold or assets and speculators want inflation. deflation has never caused any wars or chaos in history. Japan had 10 years of deflation and no political chaos or wars. However, inflation or known as inflation where its more than 25%/year and more is symptom or effect or CAUSE of political political unrest as people see incomes drop and wealth decline. Germany in the 1930's had hyperinflation and led to the rise of Nazism or nationalist socialist. The Nazi were elected and people or public no longer had faith in the 'free market' as it was 'corrupt'. The public anger and discontent with free markets and capitalism Inflation business cannot raise their prices as incomes are not rising. Business go bankrupt in high inflation with no rise in GDP growth or wealth or jobs.
Look, I'm not trying to big a dick as I have already said your post was great (except that last part). But other than the headline of this podcast you referenced, everything in it contradicts your points regarding "bubble" and commodities, as it was a lot fundamental driven. I urge you to re-listen to it paying attention to details and not to the "headline". To your defense, they did mention once that the rise in food prices could have been an aggravating factor. Fine. But you (and that show) are missing forest for the trees. You didn't see uprising in developed world countries due to same rise in prices, did you? Why is that? The side effect of the regimes is that their economies are what they are and it always leads to instability. And finally let me make my last and most important point here, something that 99,9% of people living in Western world (including otherwise awesome NPR) will never get it unless they lived under the regime (heck, they don't even truly understand what it is to be living in a centrally planned economy). They can imagine so but it's not the same thing. So, at the end of the day, these people were rising up against their oppressive authoritarian regimes for reasons more important than the price of food or general wealth gap. It would be highly offensive and disrespectful to those that fought and died in all those uprisings. And this is no different from Tiananmen Square Massacre, many deadly uprisings in (partially Soviet controlled) Eastern European countries before 1989.
I don't know to what extent you rely on intelligence for trading but there is evidence your IQ decreases as you age, so if IQ is somewhat an important factor I would guess you perhaps don't become better. It doesn't mean there can't be awesome old traders, only that those good old traders were, again, perhaps, better in their younger years.