I have a friend who comes from a catholic background where, in the 1950s (thanksgod for the 60s!) and before, a woman HAD to have a minimum of 12 children (having more than 20 was celebrated by the priests). The reason was: Democracy! The priests needed to see a majority in the elections at various levels in order to maintain their power on local politics, schools, hospitals, law, the soul and the wallet of each institution and of each person. With the electoral majority, they could sculpt a society that brought them respect, power, sustainability and a lot of money. Their tool was the uterus (not theirs, of course).

You mentioned a few times that one of the tools that the very rich use to keep poor people in line is political conflict. In the society that I just described, the conflict was not political because the main enemy of the poor, provided they stayed within their geographic area, was in their mind. It was The Devil! The Devil could make you roast in insufferable pain for eternity if you died without being forgiven for your sins by a priest (some sins, like leaving the church, could simply not be forgiven, so you were going to roast for eternity). To illustrate the concept of eternity, my friend told me, the priests would tell children: Imagine a dove flying around the earth and, with its wing, gently rubbing the side of a specific rock each time it passed. The time it would take for that rock to disappear is just the beginning of eternity! Man, that was a long time!!! And of course, individuals were helpless in front of The Devil. They had been saved 2,000 years earlier by a guy hanging on a cross, but the salvation was not automatically available to them, it had to be invoked by the priests in the name of that hanging man. So, no submission, no money = no priests = no redemption = burning for ever.

At least today, evil is the guy we see on TV. The living room TV is a bit more remote than having The Devil inside your very soul and needing a priest to extract it. I guess it's called evolution.