Can you do anything about the div soup? All the sites I have seen that build on drupal looks like it's hit by div soup. There are so many unused divs produced by the content and some templates I have looked on contribute more by adding even more terrible markup.

I know most people with some knowledge about drupal know about this issue. For instance, here is a dump from drupal.org:

 

So why does Drupal need all these divs? Is there any rational behind them or is it just a flawed design? 

Is there anything that could be done with this issue or are there some plans to improve on all these divs? Maybe a module that remove the divs that are not required and append the class statements so that markup will look better? 

Are there some modules or solution that tries to address this annoying issue?
This is the result of a flexible content management that tries to be everything to everyone. Adding more divs upon request would be difficult, so it provides everything anyone will ever need.

Every template can be overridden as you see fit. For an example of a theme that really clears out a lot of cruft, see Mothership.