Excellent point! That is the control, based on sex and soma, described in Huxley's Brave New World (hmm, vodka was heavily subsidized by the Russian government and they are one of the most sexually open societies I know of, so maybe the Russian Party wasn't so 1984ian after all).
It has often been commented that out of the two futuristic scenarios, Huxley's is much closer to the reality we are experiencing now.
That's an interesting thought. The Matrix saga may represent a failure of the command & control economic model. False freedom fails, but the machine(machines?) has(have?) a lot of power to just try again.
It has often been commented that out of the two futuristic scenarios, Huxley's is much closer to the reality we are experiencing now.