You are about 50% correct in your statement. It's actually pretty hard to get a group off their feet (at the start anyway.) Once you have a strong insight of what you are doing, things should flow more freely. The part you are correct on is the time you put into things, but at the end of the day it's the members in the group. You can set up guidelines, rules and all that jazz but it's only going to work IF the members put out the effort.
Continuing on from the members, most people just want a group to lounge in and wear the cool userbar and name color that comes with it. Not many actually want to contribute with tutorials and guides, etc. You either have an active lounge group or you have a group with maybe a handful of members that MIGHT do what they are told and fill out what you ask of them. Depending on your end goal, this will vary in the difficulty level of what the current group owner has to do in store to keep charge of his/her group.
Your point is only half right none the less, like I stated above and you came off rather strongly about it. Shit talking groups is rather pointless and extremely rude, being a group owner myself is the reason why I felt is necessary to reply to this thread to share my opinion.
Conclusion: In the end, you can always buy your own group and show us how it's done. You can sure talk a big game, but it would be nice to see what a real group owner is suppose to do.