"Those people" are "you people" are "us people".

The problem is not that of some vested, grounded elite who rule from high. The problem is not that we have some variety of malevolent overclass or illuminati pulling the strings. The problem is rather that of a culture of greed, which creates and perpetuates the "high" and the "low". By this I do not mean the capitalist system in general, rather the current neo-liberal brand of laissez-faire capitalism to the point of negligence. Hayek was vociferous on the topic of adequate regulation being essential to the sustenance and perpetuation of a liberal democracy - and adequate regulation we do not have - nor can we, with our current sociopolitical frameworks coupled with a furious pace of change. The last time technological progress so outpaced cultural and economic development, we called it the industrial revolution - and the disruption and change in life for most of man was, frankly, mindboggling - never mind the ensuing bloody transition into industrialised society, which still drags on.

As long as we continue to crank the same handle on the same sausage machine, the same sausages will continue to come out. You cannot simply remove the elite and expect magic to happen, for that power vacuum will be filled by successive elites, and the labour vacuum will be filled by successive underclasses, until the whole thing comes crashing down due to resource exhaustion and Malthus's revenge. We reside in the same sausage-machine as the Romans resided in, and inherited from the Greeks, from the Hittites and friends, from Sumeria - c.f. Baudrillard & Dick on "The Empire Never Ended". Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

Bloody revolution will simply replace one elite with another, and maintain the status quo, with a few new twists but no real change. Forceful change by the populace (i.e. revolution, but not necessarily bloody) will also be very difficult to enact at this stage, partially as we've allowed our governments and domestic armies (law enforcement) to become sufficiently militarised that any opposition would likely be quashed, and partially as we've allowed ourselves to become so sedated and mollycoddled by our Brave New World that only a minority even perceive that there is something amiss.

Our only option is systemic change which comes from within. This can only happen at the volition of those in power, who will be unwilling to give up their own vested interests. Selling future elites down the river, however, is something our governments have done before and will almost certainly do again.

Humanity requires a sufficiently large gun to be put to the head of every man, woman and child on this great greasy ball of rock, in order that we might change. That gun may well be here already, in the form of our friend "climatic alteration" ("climate change" is just too polluted a phrase now, just as "global warming" became over a decade ago). We may be faced to change our oil-dependent economies, beyond the superficial relocating of where and how we fetch that oil. We may be faced to change our attitudes to what comprises wealth, and decouple such from consumption of resources. We're still stuck in the "that fat dude must be rich" neolithic mindset. Our own survival instincts are currently working against us. We must make them work for us.

Then again, we may not succeed, and we may all end up very extinct.... which isn't the end of the world. Just of us.