There's a reason why it used to be that only landowners could vote. The powerful typically owned land and they knew if non-landowners could vote, they would outvote the landowners.<p>When the right to vote became available to everyone/most people, the landowners shifted to using their wealth in order to influence government/politics in their favor. This has worked out well for them, since as a general rule people either are too naive or politically apathetic to come together to outvote the landowners. Despite being grounded into dust by them, the common person still feel that they have much to lose by going against them. This reminds me of a fictional gambling game from an anime I've watched called E Card.<p>"The game is starts with each player holding five cards, four of which are Citizens and the last being either a Slave or an Emperor. Who holds which card is decided beforehand, and is played like that for three turns before switching. The game lasts for a total of twelve turns, meaning each side gets to play Emperor twice. The players choose one card from their hand (Emperor side lays first) and place them face-down on the table. They are then flipped over to reveal the winner of the match.<p>The three card types are Citizen, Emperor and Slave.<p>The Citizen card represents the common man, and cannot defeat the Emperor who sits at the top. It can, however, defeat the Slave, who resides at the very bottom of the system. Two citizen against each other results in a tie.<p>The Emperor represents the one at the top of society. This card can defeat the citizen, but will lose to the Slave.<p>The Slave is presented as the one at the very bottom of society. Seeing as how it has nothing to lose, it can overthrow the Emperor in one last attempt at revenge. This card will lose to a Citizen, but will win against the Emperor card."<p>My thought is that we have a large population of people who have been fooled into thinking they are the Citizen, when they are little more than Slaves. They believe that they are different, more than Slaves. So they have something to lose. Thus they can never go against the Emperor, and in fact, play their role as the Citizen in keeping down the actual Slaves who could do something about that Emperor if they actually got together.<p>Now do I think people will wake up and realize they are the Slave? Probably not, but there's a non-zero chance, depending on how the government decides to act during this crisis. Most likely though, the Citizens are going to be given some scraps, just enough that they have something to lose and keeps them under the illusion that they are more than a Slave.