I believe that the structure of civilization that society defaults to is one where the few rich and powerful outright control the many poor and weak.  A good system of government tries to stop this from happening by giving everyone an equal voice.  

However, because the rich and powerful are the rich and powerful, it’s much easier for them to subvert such a government by keeping more for themselves and less for those who don’t have the resources to respond in kind.  These rich and powerful have pretty good PR (obviously, because they’re the rich and powerful) and so they’re increasingly adept at getting many poor and weak to side with them by having the news organizations they control describe sound economic policy with some sinister moniker like “redistribution of wealth.”  

And so we currently live in a world where the middle class is disappearing, the poor have nothing and the rich have more than they have ever had in the history of everything, the economy is terrible, and yet the center of economic discussion is about how the rich might have to pay a fraction more back to society, and how that’s the Most Important Problem, Obviously.