But the joke is on the poor bastards at the bottom because the bastards at the top benefit from the average bastard's behaving like a bastard toward all of the other poor bastards who also hope to become one of those few comfortable bastards they've been taught to aspire to.
And well, we have the society that we live in.
It doesn't work well at all but people are too obsessed with punching the other poor bastard to really do anything constructive about it.