The System has for several decades been much less efficient than it used to be, and is becoming very obviously less effective. And They are clearly Not Even Trying to maintain (let alone improve) the functionality of modern society - or else They would not always be pushing for the 'inclusion' of ever less-competent and less-motivated personnel.
But equally, They do not want The System to collapse. Instead, They want to transform it into an evil System: a System for making people evil.
So, we can observe that while They could, if they wished, cause a global collapse any time They wanted (the world is so interdependent, the System is so brittle, their power is sufficient) - this does not happen.
What They are doing is to corrupt The System as much as possible, without making it collapse.
In a paradoxical way - the ideal is a highly efficient and effective System - that is dedicated to evil; but a functional system requires competence, long-termism, obedience and other virtues. This creates a difficult balancing act, since the people in The System are ever less cooperative in maintaining it. As the corruptions of evil increase, the declining quality of the participants, and the deliberate corruptions of the organisation, will reduce and eventually destroy efficiency and effectiveness.
On current trends, and with people as they are; our the future is either a totalitarian System dedicated to evil; or else The System will collapse, global chaos will ensue, and billions of people will die (probably including ourselves and our loved ones).
If we choose to maintain The System for fear of the alternative, we will probably (because this was our choice) ourselves become servants of evil - part of which will probably be voluntarily to perform actions that will further corrupt us (that is usually the way it seems to work). There is no way to opt-into a System of evil, but to opt out of becoming oneself more evil - the first choice is just the first of many such choices.
It therefore seems likely that our fear of the 'alternative 'of chaos, violence, starvation, disease and death; will be used to make us each, person by person, embrace purposive evil. Unless we die first, that is quite likely to be the real, underlying choice for most people, soon.
Indeed, it already is.
