With no basis in reality, we've brainwashed people to believe the bottom lines of the elite are to be protected. That's the outcome sought of our educational system.
It fascinates me how, on the one hand, we complain about how lazy people are. How much inducement the proles need. "Oh they're just lazy. Push em harder."
If we need to push people that hard, perhaps "economy of effort" is built into the species. It's a weird cognitive dissonance.
"They want something for nothing! But I want to maintain my elite status built upon your efforts!"
But that challenges the basis of elite power. If we all quit producing for them, they lose. So we're "induced to produce" under the constraints they define: no food, shelter, healthcare.
Not only that, we fail to realize the continuing incentives for them to act in that way, even when acting as "researchers". Here is a highly relevant Propublica investigative piece on academic economists as consultants: https://www.propublica.org/article/these-professors-make-mor...
There are a other systems that we have at least some historical evidence to show will produce even better outcomes for the majority.
The problem is those are undermined almost as quickly as they are brought up. See post about brainwashing people to protect the bottom line.
People point to places like Venezuela and USSR as examples of socialism not working, for example. While ignoring that both those states were not managed by the working class (as classical socialism typically calls for), but elite masters, their bank rollers, and external forces pushing them to abandon their ways for western capitalism (economic sanctions, cutting off access to necessary trade).
By some measures, all of which fail to account for the fact that relative deprivation is a substantial source of experienced disutility.
That really depends on the definition of »works«. If one is satisfied with the people doing the heavy lifting being a bit better off while a few overseeing everything are extremely better off, yes, then it works.
In a previous age, these would be moral principles and social norms - now it's political beliefs.