Are vastly rich industrialists mainly greedy? That's the common assumption, as Karl Marx explained.
George Carlin seems to echo the same vision. The people running our society, or ruining it, are propelled by greed. Even with the very successful people, I don't think greed is the whole answer. Probably it's too simplistic, because that's the kind of thinking Marx did. (Basically, Marx said that money -- i.e., Capital -- explains everything.)
In particular, if we want to explain our hard-left (and our berserk education establishment), money doesn't take us very far.
My own sense is that these people are motivated more by psychological compulsions. They like being able to boss people around.
If you think of them as sociopaths, their behavior is much more logical.
Let's Fix Education explains to Americans why their schools are so bad. The people in charge prefer mediocrity because they are socialists of one kind or another. If people work together to promote real education, we'll have it.