Living in the Matrix

Kevin Rudd said this:

"The international challenge for social democrats is to save capitalism from itself.”

Des Moore comments:

Such naive comments reflect a thesis that capitalism and free markets are the problem and that governments are the rescuers. Putting it another way, governments are not to blame but bankers and greedy chief executives have exploited the system for their own benefit. This idea is reflected in the Occupy Wall St group of protesters that has spread to other countries. These 99 percenters want to cut the incomes of the top 1 percent. If we tried that, the 99 per centers would certainly get a small addition to their incomes first up but that would dwindle over time as the top 1 per centers would stop trying to earn above their cut off point.

What we are witnessing throughout the western democracies are 'leaders' who have, due to the benefits conferred by a successful and productive philosophy and their unthinking abuse of this worldview; grown soft in mind as well as in body. People who have lived the 'easy life' for so long that they have embraced thinking patterns at odds with their actual existence and who remain blissfully unaware of the disjunction.

People like Al Gore, who preaches (at a cost of millions to the listeners) about rising ocean waters due to global warming, then goes and buys a mansion right on the seashore. As did the overpaid/over-hyped Tim Flannery.
People like movie stars who berate ordinary people for living unsustainable lives and then hop on their private jets to holiday lavishly in the Bahamas. The list is too long to enumerate.
People like Kevin Rudd, who states that 'capitalism' is the cause of society's failures and bigger/stronger/more powerful governments are the answer. And yet as the Rudd/Gillard governments have overwhelmingly illustrated; government operated schemes fail miserably almost without exception. And as Rudd himself illustrates in his earlier career as a Queensland government lacky; he failed at everything he was tasked to do. In fact Mark Latham was quite scurrilous about Rudd's lack of ability in his (Latham's) expose on the Labor government (for what thats worth), yet Rudd still manages to be promoted to the top spot. How often have we all seen that happen in bureucratic institutions. Failure is alsmost a right of passage into promotion.

The real problem is how many others like him are running parliment?
How many others like him are in the opposition? 
How effective has Gramsci's 'long march' been?
How perspicacious were Francis Schaeffer's predictions in his "How then should we live' series?