They control us through propaganda to make us as self-interested and sociopathic as them, as you said, using the major media they own and the policy making politicians they also own to make greed “rational self-interest” mandatory from Kindergarten through colleges of economics and beyond. Then they point to the society they’ve made cruel and selfish, and declare capitalism to be human nature, partly as a normalizing tactic, and partly to feel more peace about their cruel, withered hearts.

Their other major tool is what I like to call “subsistence opiates.” Pathetic niceties people cling to that often do more harm than good: social media, fast food, literal opiates, etc. Things that don’t make most people’s lives better, but allow them to endure the pain capitalism induces, and that they’re terrified that revolution would inturrupt the slow dopamine drip of. This is the main reason there will sadly be no revolution.

The good news is that will make collapse an eventual certainty. A house dependant on the impossibility of infinite growth will collapse, even if it takes the form of humanity destroying the habitability of its only world, as we are racing to do.