I think it is easy to dismiss this post as being a but curt, but I think it is the best advice.Maybe some experience outside of cattle boats would help.
I always show an instructor card of some sort, and I love the benefits I get from it. If there are multiple groups, I am placed with the most experienced. I get a lot of freedom to do my thing, and I am not mother-henned. I was on a dive on a large boat on the big Island in Hawai'i. They divided the divers into 3 groups. Our group was assigned a DM trainee because they felt we didn't need a DM. Everyone in our group had at least twice as many dives as the DM. We pretty much did what we pleased for as long as we pleased on that dive. The other two groups were composed almost exclusively of OW and some AOW divers. Many were rank beginners. I wonder how many instructors who had smugly fooled everyone by only showing an OW or AOW card were in those groups.
I have ALMOST NEVER had the experiences you describe, and since you suggest that you ALMOST ALWAYS have them, then there must be something very different between our experiences.
Let's take the last case in which I had a less than stellar dive experience similar to yours. I was with a small group with a single boat dive operator, and one of the divers in our group turned out to be such a beginner that we had no choice but to have beginner dives. Whose fault was it? Mine! I was going with a new operator that had been suggested to me by someone, and it was against my better judgment. In that area I had usually used a different operator with multiple boats, someone who would have made sure that didn't happen.
In summary, I plan my diving carefully, and I don't go to places or with operators where that is going to happen.