The more we fight each other the less we are fighting "them".
> If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.
It may just be an artifact of the rise of social media, although I'm not sure that the timelines really match up very well. I just want to see if anyone's really looked into it because I don't even know where to start with something like that, but it's been playing on my mind for a few months now.
A lot of them also seemed to not understand how our financial system works.
My feeling is we can't lay the problems of the modern world at the feet of individuals. There isn't a shadowy cabal intent on keep the little people down. It's just people and groups struggling for power and resources with varying degrees of a success. That's not to say there aren't collusions and conspiracies and bad doings by people with power, there most certainly are, but the fact these succeed are problems of a system. Because people are people are people and the new boss is same as the old boss and 4 legs good 2 legs better and all that jazz.
What is needed are some systemic updates. And these will happen inevitably I think.
Point is, we can't just blame bankers and politicians and corporations and call it a day. Our activity, almost to the person is responsible for the horrible outcomes. We all are trying to get a little piece of the pie and the sum total in this system is producing undesirable side effects. Housing is another prime example. It's ridiculous. Way out of wack. Unless you bought a house 30 years ago then what a great way to save for retirement and housing appreciating is fantastic!
I really think we need to back up and address some fundamentals. Housing, healthcare and education being big ones. These aren't a place for speculation and self serving bureaucracy. They are necessities of life and an advancing society. So we need to change some things about how these are run. But that means some people will no longer be able to victimize others and will lose out. But it's not all just bankers and CEOs. It's a lot of little sucker fish attached to the ecosystem as well. So it's not as easy as just getting out the guillotine which is all too common of a reaction.
You are describing a "cabal intent on keeping the little people down". The cabal works by taking steps to perpetuate systemic inequality forward.
The people involved are extremely well positioned and connected, have ridiculous amounts of material resources to call upon, and are extremely highly incentivized to keep these systemic flaws around. Thus, there is no reason to believe that systemic updates will inevitably happen.
The power elite conspiracy model in my mind is too simple and doesn't fully explain the phenomenon. Because instability isn't good for anyone so I belive it's much more complex and systemic rather than a planned conspiracy of a group of individuals.
Systemic change is inevitable I think. Sometimes it involves a hard reboot or re-install though and no one in their right mind wants that. So maybe some things in the system can be fixed to restore balance.
But first we need an accurate model of what is going on, and as loathsome as bankers and insurance CEOs might be, this isn't all their doing and they aren't the only ones preventing the fix.