Very good point, but there's another factor that's actually very ironic: affluence.
Let's face it ... The kind of mentality you describe in your post and that you see on full display in rioting scenes in Ferguson would never be seen in most places because only an affluent society could ever tolerate it. In almost any other society, people who are so useless and emotionally stunted would have been cast out into the wilderness or tossed into volcanoes years ago.
I have said before that it is only the tremendous productivity of modern agriculture and industry that allows the current situation to exist. If we tried to go back to the methods used in the thirties for production it would become immediately obvious that we are actually in a far worse situation than in the thirties because so great a percentage of modern America is incapable of providing for themselves in any way. We have college graduates pushing forty who are still depending on family to manage their affairs and support them financially. The average recent college graduate in his or her twenties is less capable of surviving in a real SHTF situation than a twelve year old of 1930. Anyone who thinks I exaggerate should look around and smell the coffee. There is no way we could have supported this high a percentage of non-productive and minimally productive people in the thirties. Even most of those who consider themselves hard workers now spend their workday as one long coffee break in comparison to how people used to work. I was born in 1944 and most of the people I knew growing up who held a forty or more hour a week job in a factory or in construction also worked a small farm in their “spare time”. I started doing chores before I ever entered first grade and was a farm hand by age ten or so, my older brother and I took over the farm work because my father worked residential construction five days a week and my mother worked seven days a week for much of the year, taking care of the house, picking and canning vegetables, cooking, washing clothes etc.
We are one or two blown out bridges over the Mississippi from disaster. The modern grid is super productive but also far more vulnerable to disruption than the old ways.