No, this isn't it at all. You're missing the key point.

You were on target with the hive.

Coordination is powerful. As social creatures, we have evolved mechanisms to coordinate behavior. In the long run, coordination has been far more advantageous than short-sighted individual action.

Even things like an "individualistic market economy" provides a way to coordinate. Tigers don't need a market economy; they're adapted for a largely solitary lifestyle.

Given the long historical advantage given to the coordinated, then yes, our coordination-instincts can be exploited and manipulated. But talking about manipulation without talking about the underlying central behavior gives entirely the wrong idea. Indeed, a bunch of the things you listed (e.g. "environmental destruction") are only addressable if we don't solely act in terms of individual interest, because they are precisely tragedy-of-the-commons-type issues that are only soluble with coordination of some sort.