General Discussion

The people in that world may have been conditioned in what substituted for in utero, and they may have been systematically drugged, but they weren't miserable - they were mostly happy - the protagonist stood out because he wasn't, and many blieved somthinghas gone wrong with his pre-natal chemicals. No dictator in real life will ever enforce a system which tries to make everyone happy. For one thing, it costs too much. For another, those who have an authoritarian temperament, whether leaders or followers, cannot be happy unless someone else is miserable.