One reason for black scholes today is that it is a decent interpolation function. It is significantly easier to create an implied volatility function to interpolate with than it is to create a price function to interpolate with directly. Another is that regardless of the smile, the real delta of an option is pretty damn close to black-scholes delta. So, you can maintain prices in real time as a function of the underlying price pretty accurately. A third (and this is important) is that trading systems have it built in as a way to interface with them. People know black-scholes and it isn’t proprietary. So you can do all sorts of research on the dynamics of a volatility smile, and it can be orthoganol to someone doing research on expected dividends or what the actual value of the underlying is. And you can bring all those pieces back together via the black scholes equation. A fourth reason tied into machine learning: implied volatilities behave just much better than raw interpolated prices when running them through predictive algorithms.
I mean, I agree with you. But to me, the whole complexity is just moved to vol modeling. BS with its economic assumptions is just an empty shell now, so to speak.
I am deeply cynical