>>>Do people believe that the business world operates in the manner these clowns do?
Not quite, but most of the tasks do feature things would come across in the "real world" such as buying, selling, negotiating etc.
So getting pricing right is important (the people last week lost because they under priced their candles, and this week they lost because they under priced their coach tickets).
And remember the week with the famous "T shirts" debacle.
The teams were given a pile of unrelated items (lemons, potatoes, flowers, T shirts etc).
The key thing was to spot the items you could make the most money on and focus on them. The lemons and potatoes were never going to make you a lot of money so you focus on the T shirts.
Both teams failed to make any money on the T shirts, but the "worst" team never even went back to pick them up.
Also all these tasks are done at short notice, under some speed, and are often outside the skill area of the people involved, and sometimes in the real world these things happen.
So all these lessons are useful for the real world.
However it is still an "entertainment" show.