Yes, it's a sad fact that most people are sheep in need of a shepherd. I haven't thought too deeply into why this is, but at first glance it appears that this is the way for all social groups to maximize cooperation and overall benefit.
Think about it, if you had a group where everyone was a leader and nobody was a follower, it would be far more difficult to get everyone to get on board and on the same page to cooperate. Everyone will have their own ideas and want to do things their own way, but eventually there will be convergence to some optimal course of action. On the other hand, if you had one leader and everyone else as a follower, you could very easily get everyone to come together towards some goal with little to no resistance. A lot more ends up getting done, regardless of whether or not anything done was good/bad, useful/wasteful (that's a separate discussion altogether).