So you think the profiles made by the converter geeks are bad?
Well, they are like printer profiles, or default screen settings. Made to impress the average user, generally not made to be accurate or, well, good. If you by converter geeks mean employees at say Adobe that make profiles for commercial products.
There are exceptions though, the MFD guys, C1 & Hassy have been very successful in designing successful looks desired by the pros. However it is still about a designed look, a heritage from the film days. I don't think digital should work this way. I think it's time for photographers to take command over their own color and develop workflows that is less dependent on the taste of raw converter and camera makers.
I haven't really investigated the issue but I'm assuming many smaller raw converters like iridient etc make neutral profiles rather than a look though.
Can photographers succeed equally well, or is it just too difficult so you must leave it to the manufacturers? I don't know for sure. I know I prefer using my own neutral profiles than using a readily packaged look, but on the other hand I do landscape photos not portraits. But I think a major aspect of the problem is that people don't try, the more people try the more and better techniques of how to work with your colors to get them the way you like without having to buy camera X Y or Z would then appear.
CCD believers are getting fewer day by day anyway, and color responses become more and more equal between cameras (that's why cross-using profiles can provide quite good results) so I expect the talk about camera-specific color will eventually fade.