How is it that we managed to abolish slavery? How do we have an age of consent? How do we have minimum wage? Everyone in power is evil and hates us, but why are women still allowed to vote? How come minimum wage hasn’t lowered or been removed entirely?
And more importantly, how do we get good things to happen again? Because it seems like no matter where someone is on the political spectrum, THEY’RE ALL EVIL and they hate us. (And even if they didn’t, they’re still controlled by evil billionares.)
There’s an early-60s stage play I was in once called Marat Sade, set in a mental asylum in 1808. The central theme is essentially that authority only exists because we let it. There are a lot more of us than there are of them. I think that show is ripe for a revival.
I see your post is being hammered deep into the ground, because at a superficial glance it appears to maybe challenge the local gospel that the system is evil - even though it doesn’t really do that. This sort of thing isn’t tolerated by people who react to the first word they see that raises their shields.
But to try to answer your actual question, I think the reason good things happen even in a bad system is the same as how brilliant ideas can emerge from a sea of ignorance. In the “rise of civilization” it hasn’t really been civilization that’s been rising - as in people generally getting smarter and doing things better. It’s more a process where a DaVinci shows up now and then and contributes brilliant ideas that get adopted by the group. Remarkable individuals show the way, and as long as adopting their idea doesn’t take much effort, the generally clueless public goes along with it.