Since the 1980s we have seen the emergence of the psychopathic crowd. No surprise psychopaths are often tied to financial success and riches. Most psychopaths are intelligent and can be extremely charming when it suits their ulterior motives. Its often learned behavior, a belief instilled of high human superiority over most others and that others have no real value.
It flourished in the 1980s with the sudden unleashing of the financial sector, large MNCs, and in our culture. Remember shows like Dynasty, Dallas and Knot's Landing. Being rich, in style and void of any human caring became entertaining if not deemed commendable. C level pay began to explode over ordinary worker pay.
In the 1990s the behavior moved to the world of technology. Prior to the 1990s those in technology were considered geeks and nerds. By the 1990s they were the new found sexy uber rich (even though many of their new Internet companies were a sham). In the naughts, the focus of psychopathic behavior moved back into the financial sector on steroids. Everyone saw the joke the subprime mortgage was and decided to cash in on want would most certainly be a trail of pure misery and economic pain, versus screaming foul. People like Bernie Madoff, Dick Fuld and Stan O'Neil sprang up over night as the architects of worthless financial activities. More to the point, the smart ones buttered up the Federal Reserve and politicians to make sure the ending did not take them down. Other than Madoff (stupid enough to admit his guilt) all of these guys are living a life of luxury.
Since then psychopathic behavior has erupted everywhere from big Pharma to defense companies to payday lenders, looking to cash in on misery and misfortunes. The people at the top of Uber or Airbnb, psychopaths. People running Wall Street, psychopaths. People looking to take advantage of human misery and economic pain, psychopaths. Its as if "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" has become the norm in society.
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The word you should use is sociopath. "a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience." That's a better fit.
I also think in terms of a "parasite class" being a problem. You've enumerated upon the parasites in the upper income levels. There are some in the lower income brackets also. I don't think we should demonize all of the upper class, nor all of the lower class. We should demonize the behaviors of corruption, graft, and other forms of sleaziness.
Conscience matters. The great Adam Smith not only wrote "Wealth of Nations" but also "The Theory of Moral Sentiments." Most of the great free market writers have written of the need for conscience. At my daughter Amanda's commencement ceremony at Oral Roberts University last spring, the head of the school of finance spoke much about integrity during his dialog to the graduates from that school.
But of course we need better systems of checks and balances to keep corruption at bay. This is why I feel supply side, Keynesian economics just can never perform properly in the real world. Just as communism just does not work with real people due to the inherent collapse of ambition under such a system, the Keynesian approach creates cycles of expanding government and expanding deficit spending and central banking power. The relaxation cycles during boom periods never counters the expansive cycles to "help" the economy recover during weak periods.
Most Americans have consistently rejected Marxism. We must equally, or even more strongly, reject Keynesian economics if we are ever to bust up the oligarchy. Study Keynes is you wish, but flawed people cannot apply systems which can only work effectively with perfect humans.
The failure of Marx has born out in other parts of the world. The failure of Keynes has played out in the US, for those willing to objectively discern the failure.
Infrastructure projects, unfortunately, have too much of a time lag to be used effectively in a Keynesian strategy. When a bust market hits, there is too much time spent fighting about what projects to do first, so by the time a spending decision could be made, the bust cycle is over. National park improvement is less of a challenge as those properties are in total control of the federal government, and any investment addresses the "common good" concern.
Keynes was brilliant, as was Marx, but there economic strategies just do not work in a real world with real people. We've been suffering from a Keynesian strategy for over 100 years in the US. It's time we broke out of it.
Many managers exhibit sociopathic behavior, but I believe they just tow the company line to keep their job and are not true sociopaths. Nevertheless, I have little respect for them for selling their soul. Maybe I haven't gone as far as I could have, but I have never sold my soul to The Man.
Jaques Ellul writes in his book on Propaganda that smarter people are more easily indoctrinated.
The new religion is self worship, there is no God, life only happens once, get what you can, etc. Young people buy into this, esp when it gives them a sense of superiority or sense of membership in an exclusive club. The club discriminates against non members (that is why we have clubs). People's basic thinking in terms of morals changes.
And there are psychopaths, and they will tend to get further ahead in competition for obvious reasons but I think most of it is just the power of mind control technologies that the powers that be have to keep us divided.
They want us divided in any way possible, income, sex, race and some to be (the "winners") completely unconscious of rational morals or respect for basic universal laws.
To explicitly classify people as "winners" and "losers" puts a materialist spin on how people get judged or included or un-included in groups.
I think it is social engineering rather than naturally occurring phenomenon. Most people really underestimate how easily they can be manipulated. If you have a huge ego then that is a weakness easily taken advantage of.
Little cues in the media that when repeated, can gradually shift a persons moral center.
I don't understand how they do it really, but I know the technology is there, its powerful and profitable so its likely being used to a far greater extent than most of us can imagine.
We let the vampire in when we let him print our money for us and then rent that money back to us. The power shifted from governments to private interest. One can only imagine what private interests are doing or thinking about.
We were put on this earth to help others- not to become greater.
That really nags on you. Think about my offer.
T.V., media, magazines, it's always been about the Benjamins, getting rich, living large. And deriding the Leave it to Beaver 50's and 60's as being somehow inferior (not as "real" man). Disparaging religious people at every turn is cool.