"Foodopoly" puts the focus on the Agricultural Development Council (ADC), Ag policies and corporate inputs, while "The History of the World in 7 Cheap Things" reinforces the concept of value extraction (feudalism, if you will), but the real culprit is religion: the only thing worse than killing people is to make them question their beliefs.

Democracy doesn't exist if people are Believers. It only works if the majority are skeptical. While many presidents before were fascists, racists and war mongering plutocrats, Reagan was the first Messiah of Greed, leading the growth of what everyone calls "Neoliberalism" to the Consumer-accolytes. Even most Democrats are devout consumers: voting billions of times every day for Reaganism's sponsors. The conversion of the Economy of Stupid was brought to you by Farm Efficiency and the Green Revolution. Americans would never have been able to buy all those cars, oil and suburbs if they had to keep spending 40% of their household income on food, and corporations wouldn't be able to cheapen(enshittify) so many and so much so profitably if we hadn't fed so many people so cheaply. Now, they use "humaneness" as the reason we can't stop our dependence on their jobs and chemicals.