Beyond the Fantasy: Getting off the train once and for all

[silentenigma]

Really? "Our" capitalist society? I seem to be living in a very different society than you. Because in my case, exploitative practices by companies attempting to tear the most money out of their consumers has in fact led to continual collapse of said companies. That is has been government interference (in the form of subsidization and bailouts) that have kept these companies going, rather than capitalism, which is, by definition, private, not government control of businesses. Which, by the way, also leads to a very interesting argument that Shinra cannot be based on capitalism at all, since Shinra is the government of FFVII's "world".

This a million times over. Capitalism ≠ Corporatism. Shinra the weapons manufacturer was only able to become Shinra the mega-corporation because their biggest customer was a government during wartime. (A government, of course, can use coercive means [taxes] to support essentially limitless spending - this is NOT capitalism.) Shinra further takes advantage of government's monopoly of force, not unlike corporations in our own society; a few decades and a bit of corruption later, the company has, for all intents and purposes, become the government.

If anything, FFVII's story is one of corruption, in almost every area of society, and explored from different angles.

A lot of great ideas here. From my point of view, FFVII's biggest theme is humanity's loss of spirituality and appreciation for life in the modern world, largely manifested in the examples of corruption you've given. Definitely much bigger than Midgar alone.