Agree with your sentiment. But what we really need is a substitute for facebook. Until that comes, folks who want to socialize will continue to use facebook.
There are already several alternatives to facebook. For example Google's orkut.com Seems to be popular in India. All the developers I work with there use it rather than fb.
Orkut privacy settings fit in one tab. There are seven settings of which five have just two options. All in simple English. I don't need to read a blog article to understand them. What is your excuse, facebook?