Agreed, I do believe there are actual malevolent Malthusian ideologies involved in our governments, although probably not at the lower 99%, but rather the top 1%.
Corruption rises to power. Psychopaths can always game whatever system is in place since they have no morals. They merely repeat the expected slogans of a given social system with sufficient conviction and no criticism.
This works because loyalty always trumps competence in social hierarchies. Competence can be bought on a need-to-have basis. Loyalty is harder to come by.
I believe I saw parts of Metropolis if you refer to the black-white movie, I don't remember seeing it in full so I probably didn't.