What made Brave New World far more interesting to me than 1984 is that the bad guys in 1984 are really clearly bad guys who hide behind an impossibly thin veneer of public mindedness in order to live exactly as grandly as they want whereas in Brave New World the man at the top truly believes that he is a force for good in the world. His life is not a selfish one, not in the same way, he just believes that most people are happier living in his pleasure dome. He doesn't hate or fear the protagonist but instead he wants to help him by spiriting him away from the happy drugged masses to let him live out his life with the other people who don't want to live that way. It's an entirely different kind of conflict and much much more compelling.
Actually they create a lower class by adding alcohol into their incubation chambers. The rich/smart make them stupid. They make them cheap laborers like a dictator keeping the value of a currency low with respect to other countries.
On the one hand, they say that they can't have automation: they tried, and the lower castes got too bored. On the other hand, they need the lower castes as menial labours.
Do away with the alcohol, and add robots, and you'll have a much nicer society.
