I can't begin to imagine the games that billionaires and other various cabals play in influencing policy over the years, but from my own observation it seems to be intentional.
EDIT: Since this is generating some conversation, I'll add more detail. The article is actually quite good at explaining a lot of the details.
My own observations over the last 20 years, I've seen what appears to be consorted interest in breaking up institutions that bring communities together.
Public schools are a big one as there are enough differences of opinion on policy, rules, funding approaches, discipline, levels of control from the school itself, to parents, to school boards, to state governments, to the department of education. Public schools used to be a point of pride for communities and currently they are a point of conflict.
Churches are another where people in a community would actively come together to learn to be better people, serve their community and serve each other with a higher cause. They also created wonderful environments for youth activities outside of school. Attacks on church communities have been fairly relentless online doing as much as possible to influence people away from them. Legislatures even got in on the action during Covid too.[3]
The concussion scare amplification around football in particular in the US did a ton of damage to the sport, despite women's soccer actually being the most dangerous sport for concussions.[1] This had an outsized effect on participation in youth football, which does more to positively influence young men and communities in general than any other sport in the US due to the diversity of participants, body types, different position jobs, roles and the need for everyone to work together as a unit to find success. Some advocates is even trying to ban it outright in California, but the governor shot it down.[2] High school football coaches are also put in great positions to act as both coaches, counselors and father figures for many young men who do not have them. The roster sizes of football teams go a long way towards making this one of the US's greatest community institutions.
This continues at the college level until recently and we just saw the greatest coach in the history of the sport, Nick Saban, retire and speak at the capital about why. He used to be able to help prepare young men for success in life. Now all anybody cares about is money.
There's more of course, but it's a seemingly intentional trend where the pattern that I see is institutions that bring communities together being attacked or turned into something divisive.
1- https://theconversation.com/do-women-soccer-players-have-mor...
2 - https://apnews.com/article/california-youth-tackle-football-...
3 - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/supreme-court-blocks-ny...