National Association of Realtors convinced everyone their realtor has their best interests and fiduciary responsibility.

Of course, this is 100% BS. Probably half of realtors lie or turn a blind eye so you will close. 99% of purchasers will never sue their realtor.

What is wild to me is, having a lawyer do your closing is only $500 but having an agent is ~$10k on average.

I bought my first home without a realtor and have no regrets.

If you mean the realtor handling it (with their own lawyers etc), I never even heard of this as a thing - I used my own lawyer, there wasn't any kind of offer or expectation the realtor would facilitate.. but i'm not in the US.

100% this. Realtors (TM) often do everything to make the transaction happen with the least amount of their effort.

I've been in a situation with a "seller's" Realtor (TM) who would just agree to whatever logistical details the buyers were asking, and then tell us how we had to dance to their tune. The attorney set them all straight, but it never should have gotten to that point. The same Realtor (TM) bungled the one house showing that I wasn't around to facilitate, setting off the alarm system that we had warned her about multiple times - including specifically for that showing. I'm sure prospective homeowners love being greeted by a loud siren. There was some other last-minute problem too that I'm not recalling the details of, but we ended up emailing the owner of her agency and told them we wanted someone else to represent us at the closing. She was that bad, but of course she had talked a really good game to get us to sign that lock-in exclusive contract at the start. Getting that contract signed is the Realtor's (TM) chief KPI, and they know it.

Of course Sturgeon's law and all that. I'm sure there are realtors who take their duties seriously. And I'm sure some people have had the complete opposite experience with poor attorneys. The incentives for Realtors (TM) are just much poorer though.