Traditionally and historically options buyers are dumb retail money. Selling options has been the domain of the Lords of the Market (market makers) and smart big money, a lot of it insider money (inside the system that is WS, not insider as in companies).
WS makes buying options very easy. I can open an account for 1,000 USD and put it into options immediately (and probably lose it just as fast). The spectacular percentage returners are ALWAYS buys. Just last week bought fifty cent QQQ options expiring the same day that I unloaded for a 200% return. If I had held I would have made over 1,000% on the SAME day. This makes for fantastic advertising. It is like selling lotto tickets. 'Dumb' money tends to be looking for the huge fast returns. There is a lot of dumb money out there. Most options buyers are gamblers. They are not going away anytime soon, unless maybe it is to Draft Kings.
Dumb money is always told over and over how dangerous it is to sell options (my 'financial advisor' at CITI just told me the same thing a couple of weeks ago - and I was talking to him about covered calls!
). I have an account at Citibank where despite my experience and scorching returns over the past four years (thank you TSLA) I am not allowed to sell put options unless I call and speak to a person. Ridiculous. I have a trust account I funded recently at JP Morgan and asked to be set up to sell CCs and again I was told this would only happen with a live person on the phone (WTF?! Please tell me that up front...).
WS makes selling options very hard. You have to have a relatively huge capital base, either in cash or in equity for it to be worth it. Sells can only make 100% and are liable for theoretically huge or infinite percentage losses (which you are reminded of constantly). You have to know how to manage your margin and risk or you can blow up your account and even be left owing money to the house. And even if you know all this and are good with it, see my above experience with two of the largest banks in the world (granted I can move the money... what a pain in the ass. I have other accounts...sigh).
If you talk to retail 'traders' or stock players, most of them take a while to understand selling a stock short, forget about derivatives in both directions that can be either bought or sold simultaneously. Those with more experience readily acknowledge that selling options is where the consistent money is at, but they usually feel it is complicated and dangerous. That you would be competing with professionals (which of course you are always in any trade in any direction). And then there are those few who have the knowledge, time, patience and capital base to engage in option selling full time and perhaps make spectacular returns on a regular basis over the long term. But it is NOT easy. Ask the people here.
You are right that this is an obvious inefficiency that one would think in the world of 'efficient' markets would at some point be exposed and corrected. But markets are not efficient. They only claim to be. And there is tremendous systemic stacking of the deck to keep it the way it is right now.