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Check The Hitchiker's Guide to The Galaxy and look up the entry under "Golgafrincham". They are us. And we is doomed.

"Golgafrincham, home of the circling poets of Arium, decided that one third of its population was useless, and devised a ruse to get rid of them by concocting a story that their planet would shortly be destroyed in some great catastrophe.
The useless population consisted of middle management, telephone sanitizers, management consultants, marketing executives, hairdressers and the like. Although there were conflicting accounts of the exact nature of the supposed catastrophe, they were generally told that a giant mutant star goat was threatening Golgafrincham.
All these people were packed into one of three giant Ark spaceships and told that everyone else would follow shortly in the other two. Of course they did not follow, and lived happily for a while; but, ironically enough, the whole remaining population shortly afterward died out from a deadly plague spread by unexpectedly dirty telephone."

I am a big fan of Douglas Adams, although I think the new movie is an abomination, I should, perhaps, amend my theory. In addition to the regulation / stupidity proportion I would include an infrastructure / dependence proportion. When I grew up the only infrastructure we had was electricity and telephone. If something broke we would fix it ourselves. If we needed something we would make it or generate sufficient income to buy it. If we needed something done we did it ourselves. The nearest police were thirty miles away so we were armed and defended ourselves against bad guys. When I moved to the city none of my neighbors could fix something without hiring someone or calling a government service. After years, and even generations, of not doing for themselves they have lost the ability to do so. When the town or other government authority wants to get them to do something like voting for a corrupt official or a dumb regulation or paying more taxes all they have to do is threaten to cut the services they have become dependent on. much like a pimp telling his girls they will have to do things or their drugs will be cut off.