Many parts of the jewish world give more importance to the sayings of the (supposedly wiser) dead sages than to the opinions of the rabbis of today. This is the same attitude - saying that we are but dwarfs when compared to the (dead) giants of the past.

It remains unclear to me why you say that the wise men of today are lesser than the wise ones of the past. Does this claim rely on objective facts? What kind of wisdom are we talking about here?

Also, as far as I can see, the system you describe cannot change very quickly because great men are anyway rare in history and, it seems, the only way to reverse the opinion of a great man is through the opinion of an even greater man (which also becomes more difficult if wisdom just decreases from one generation to the next). So changes should become extremely rare over time. Is this a correct conclusion?

So we do agree that in Judaism it makes a difference if something was said by rabby Akiva or by a rabby living today.
Hence, a saying is not judged just by its contents, but also by its author. This is an obstacle for critical discussion because a rabby has to be very "daring" in order to propose the reversal of a rule created, for example, in the Talmud era.

As a possible alternative consider the Israeli law system. When the court applies a certain law to the case in hand, nobody asks which MKs supported that law when it was voted on in the Knesset. The law is simply there, and if enough people realise it has become inappropriate - it is changed.

To summarize, respect for the wisdom of former generations is, in my opinion, irrational and damaging. We have to think for ourselves.

Perhaps "respect for" is inappropriate and should be replaced by "giving superior importance to". Sorry for the lapse.

Ofcourse. We assume that if Rabby's sayings were so deep and profound that we still remember them after many hundreds of years - they are something that's worth listening to.
I think we can safely assume that many teachers were active in Akiva's time, but only his sayings and some selected few survived to this day.