The availability cascade

What I gather from Kahneman in relation to self-efficacy is that we feel very efficacious for things we are actually rather bad at. That being said, I feel like this can be advantageous; if we knew how bad we were at decision making or risk calculation or probability, it would be crippling, and we might not try to accomplish anything. Although Kahneman points out some pitfalls, like Love Canal and the Alar scare, I’m not convinced that these were necessarily unwarranted overreactions. The availability cascade may have led to extreme responses but being adamant about not accepting toxic water and potentially harmful chemicals on your food seems rational to me. I think overreactions can serve a purpose to hold people accountable and enact change. Were these events not to have engaged the public so drastically, how much more might have the responsible parties tried to get away with? Should we wait for something more risky or detrimental to occur before demanding change? The cost of not reacting in these types of situations is potentially greater than overreacting. A false sense of efficacy for weighing the risk of an event or outcome seems evolutionarily necessary. Though we might be technically bad at weighing risks maybe that makes us good at other more important things, such as engaging in collective efficacy and demanding change before something bad has to happen.