A "functional" society is not the same thing as a society worth living in or supporting.

Corporatism with wage slaves working 80 hours a week in the most productive period of human history ever is functional, in that people are deliberately kept alive and productive as long as they don't get too uppity.

Sure, this makes the upper class obscenely wealthy at the cost of everyone else, but it does technically work. Lines do go up.

Just not the lines that should go up.