Modern Life is a Scam

Imagine ten men are shipwrecked and stranded on a small island. Thankfully banana trees are everywhere, so there’s plenty of food.

Except there’s a problem- one clever man has taken control of the bananas. He pays two men a few bunches a day to guard a hut packed to the ceiling. So those two are doing ok, but the remaining seven are not. Three are barely surviving by doing hard labor for just a few bananas a day. The last four lay on straw mats, too weak to stand. They’re starving.

Wouldn’t that be an insane way to run the banana island? Instead of an easy life in paradise, one guy hoarding has created a living hell.

Now brace yourself- the island I’m describing is real.

It’s the earth.

Despite plenty of resources, right now 70% of humans live in abject poverty. Meanwhile the richest 10% own everything, just like the island. In the graphic below each person represents 10% of the population, and each block represents 1% of global resources. See if you can spot a problem with the distribution of wealth.

This is the tragedy of our time. The scale of death and suffering incurred by global poverty over the last century makes the Holocaust look quaint. And there’s no reason for it- we have the means to provide food and shelter for everyone on earth. It wouldn’t even be that difficult. Look at all those boxes stacked up- even just a few of them would solve this.

So why don’t we? Why is this happening? Just like on the banana island, global poverty exists because the rich and powerful are imposing systems of oppression. The dominant political, economic and social systems they run divide everyone on earth into four groups:

Tier 1 is the financial and political elite, who together enforce and dictate our systems. Many live lavishly, and can be thought of as modern kings.

Tier 2 are those paid just enough to protect the status quo rather than risk falling down a level. These are the folks guarding the bananas. This includes most of the United States.

Tier 3 are slaves and do all the hard labor needed to run society, for next to nothing. These are often people in the global south.

Tier 4 are the people starving. Note that this is a modern invention- people starving while surrounded by food. Throughout history, food and goods were largely produced by the community consuming them, or in some proximity. But in modern time we have shifted to a global system where resources are produced in the cheapest markets and then sold in the most expensive.

To create such a system, the rich and powerful have stolen local land and resources from communities all over the world. It’s a heartbreaking story of neocolonialism that deserves more than I will say here, so please read this book. One key concept I want to highlight, however, is privatization. Privatization is when public resources are sold to private corporations. For example why are private companies like Nestle allowed to sell our own water back to us? Who gave them the right to buy our drinking water?

It’s true that they purchased the rights, but that’s besides the point. The key question is why such an important community resource was for sale in the first place? The answer is that it should not have been, but our government has been compromised by the folks in Tier 1, and they have used that power to legalize the theft of public resources. And it’s hardly just water- every single resource on earth has been commodified. Housing. Power. Food. Rainforests. Human lives. In the modern era corporations own everything, and they’re willing to sacrifice the entire planet to make money.

The capitalist scam in play here is so broad and pervasive that it’s hard to wrap your mind around. It’s like we’ve all been gaslit into believing it’s normal that one guy has all the bananas, and it’s normal that so many people are starving. It’s the sort of gaslighting typical of an abusive relationship. But what they’re doing is not normal, or sane. There’s no reason why a small number of people should be allowed to take the shared resources of our planet and sell them back to us.

So how do we change this? What can we do?

Wrestling power from these maniacs will be tricky, because their systems are specifically designed to resist change. For example most people in the United States have no idea that so many people are suffering globally, nor how their own actions are perpetuating it.

Elsewhere I have described a solution in more depth, but the key idea is that corruption has been built into the systems we use, meaning we all power our own oppression by participating in them. Specifically, the systems we use for information, money, and political power have been compromised, and are designed to disempower the population and enforce the tiers of inequality.

To replace them we need to build alternative systems, such that we can opt out of the rigged ones. With money this means shifting from fiat currencies like the dollar into any variation of cryptocurrency that maintains an open source, decentralized, and trusted system for storing value.

The same applies to our information and communication- we must shift from corporate platforms to open source, decentralized, trustable alternatives. If we had non-corporate controlled media, the fundamental scam of modern society I’m describing would be talked about constantly. Instead it’s invisible.

Once we have regained control over our money and information, we’ll be poised to restore political power to the people, and break the yoke of the banana island.