Well to be honest, I think you’re right. It is a losing battle. 
Which is why we change the battle.
Vaclav Havel’s essay “ the Power of the Powerless” discusses this whole concept. Fight the system directly, you’ll lose, remove the system from your own life, in cooperation with others, and eventually the system collapses.
He wrote it in the Soviet Union. 
Turns out, he was right. 
Fitting that he became President of the Czech Republic later.