The point I'm trying to make is my usual tiresome one, that these ebbs and flows of history are due to social and technological change, not conspiracies of evil men sitting around a table figuring out how to victimize others. Still, when conditions are ripe, evil men will come out of the woodwork and take advantage of it, and good men will go with the flow because they don't know any better. Things happen because it is worthwhile for someone, or some class, to do it. Then there is incentive and opportunity, and the means to do so. And these people in aggregate, even if not evil as individuals, have common interests that tend to push events along.

Why do you think the American colonists revolted against the British? It's because they could see that the Crown was using them just as it later used the Indians, but they were white educated businessmen who new about gunpowder and they weren't about to let it happen to them. Those who profited by British rule talked about God, King and Country, those who stood to lose talked about Freedom, Liberty and the Rights of Man, but if you could go back and actually survey colonial America, which side they stood on was probably highly correlated with how their financial affairs were going to respond to continued British rule. The Boston Tea Party wasn't about how the colonists were tired of paying taxes on tea, it was about how smugglers who depended on the tea tax to keep prices up were going to lose their shirt when it was lifted. Of course, then as now, the third of the poplulation who was neutral had no clue what was going on so they had to be persuaded.

At some time or another, people have to take sides in these great historical spasms, it is the purpose of history to give us the information we need to choose. If we don't listen, we usually talk ourselves into the policy of what benefits us most, personally, and hang the rest.
It doesn't always work out this way, Japan was able to resist the European plan, but it was only able to so by adopting their methods, and it cost them dearly in the long run. In the longer run, it paid off handsomely.

As for your other points, they are certainly true, but I'm enough of an optimist to believe there is enough around for everyone to prosper, as long as no one group gets too greedy. And in the long run, it is the most profitable strategy for everyone concerned.