Efficacy has more to do with the specific situation than the tools you use. Rather, it is versatility of a tool that allows someone to take advantage of the situation.
What makes abstractions more versatile has more to do with its composability and expressiveness of those compositions.
An abstraction that attempts to (apparently) reduce complexity without also being composable, is overall less versatile. Usually, something that does one thing well, is designed to also be as simple as possible. Otherwise you are increasing the overall complexity (and reducing reliability or making it fragile instead of anti-fragile) for very little gain.
What makes abstractions more versatile has more to do with its composability and expressiveness of those compositions.
An abstraction that attempts to (apparently) reduce complexity without also being composable, is overall less versatile. Usually, something that does one thing well, is designed to also be as simple as possible. Otherwise you are increasing the overall complexity (and reducing reliability or making it fragile instead of anti-fragile) for very little gain.