I sometimes wonder if the economy is engineered in such a way that we all have just enough to survive, but not too much so that we don't have to be preoccupied with our day to day situations to work towards making everything work out, because if enough of us aren't preoccupied, you might get more that find the time for activism..

I think this is close to truth. This is the debt cycle. I have written something about this a long time ago, I will see if I can find it.