It is not a dark view, it is an inconvenient view but it is the reality of the human species. You have over 10,000 years as your evidence. Enjoying laughter, fun, good times, good company, creating art and music and beauty do not negate those realities. Being capable of doing good and seeing good has not been a defining feature of our 10,000+ year long history and civilization. Being good and doing good are things that have to be learned and require immense effort to enforce on a societal level. They are not our natural state. As they say, most people are 9 meals away from anarchy and for quite a few the only thing keeping them from going fully ballistic on their neighbor is the thin veneer of civilization.

If you think the future is going to look like what Roddenberry envisioned with Star Trek where humanity will have learned its lessons and finally created a just society based on the principles of economic and environmental justice then you will be disappointed. And the system you speak of does not exist in the abstract, it is made up of people, of human beings, they make the system.

The cruel mean, petty people are us, not some abstract entity "out there". And in that sense I guess yes, we are our own punishment. We are destroying our lives, our planet, plunging us into war, destitution, misery and bankruptcy. Bezos or Gates or Musk are not anomalies of humanity. If they went away, someone else would replace them. Just look at all the Musk sycophants who see the damage he is causing but are still enamored of him. Why? Cause they wanna be him. They look at him and they do not see a liability or a wreck of a human being, they see a great visionary and exemplary human being , the prime example of success, which they hope to be one day. And if not then aspire to so maybe their kids can be him.