Please don't post ideological rants to HN. We're looking for substantive comments here. That means comments that contain information rather than rhetoric.
Right, the bread and circuses are the bit that keep us distracted from the important bit, which is our disenfranchisement as citizens. Now it takes the place of shareholders/bankers/pension fund managers seizing all the power in society by buying politicians, setting themselves up as monopolists (and, for labor, monopsonists), and generally being in charge of every decision that citizens (as consumers and producers) might conceivably make in a way adverse to those in power.
The great thing about our system is that the ruling class even make money on the bread (farm subsidies, school lunch programs designed mainly as more farm subsidies rather than as a way to feed schoolkids healthy food, more farm subsidies) and the circus (monopolistic ISPs, cable companies, media holding companies, and content aggregators, now seemingly in the process of all merging into one by gobbling each other up) parts too!
As far as I remember it was more about the moral decline of the people who do not want anything besides bread and circuses :) Just checked Wikipedia: "People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses." (Juvenal).
