How Government Became a Hiding Place for Capital

The idea that a small group of individuals can form a “government” representing the best interests of its people has been one of the most disastrous leaps of faith humanity ever took.  Arguably, as our societies grew, we had no choice but to form these governments.  Although transferring power and authority from the masses to a group of leaders may seem undemocratic, which it is, it did serve many practical functions: it pooled and organised resources, brought a sense of unity to the population, and cultivated a much needed illusion of belonging – to a place, a nation, an idea. 

All these “benefits” of course had their downsides.  The pooling of resources in practice often meant the accumulation of these resources within the hands of the few.  Social unity became overrated as society itself grew into a vast, nameless herd.  As for the “belonging”, this mostly served the leaders:  Belonging could easily be twisted into narratives attacking the “unbelonging”, weaponised into nationalism and used to suppress so-called dissent.  Governments significantly expedited the exhaustion of resources, widened inequality to previously unimaginable levels, and alienated almost every citizen who sooner or later felt the cold, heartless hand of indifference and discrimination from the very people who had been elected to “represent” them.  This was, and still is, largely what we call government.  Even as most of the world transitioned from monarchy to representative democracy, many of the downsides of governance remained at large, persisting into the present day.

Governments did not devolve into distant, corrupt bureaucratic entities. They were set up as such from the very beginning.  For every government in the world today who genuinely represents its people, you will find another hundred who don’t. It doesn’t take much effort to argue that government represents neither people, nor a privileged class of humans. It represents, defends, and protects the entity behind every single one of humanity’s decisions: money and wealth.  The reason why regimes rise and fall has as much to do with their defective social ethos as it does with the hard figures of budget allocation, economic growth priorities, and propensity for corruption.  Governments are constantly hostage to the macroeconomic indicators which they so desperately try to control.  It is these indicators in fact which end up controlling them instead.  Money ends up dictating policy, instead of policy dictating the allocation of money.

Despite being an abstract, mechanistic, non-DNA based entity, money behaves very much like a life form: it too needs to secure its future existence, which it does by pursuing profit. Through the creation of money, humanity unintentionally gave rise to a new lifeform which eventually parasitised it.  Concealing itself within the pretence of progress, the parasitic money entity grew slowly until it established itself firmly within human society.  It developed myriads of ways to propagate itself while simultaneously providing its human host with plenty of rewards for participating in this intimate symbiosis: a currency which they could use any which way they wanted, unaware that each time they did, they only strengthened the monetary monster. 

The role of government in this symbiosis has been, and remains, to be a puppet.  Government is the manikin in the shop window, luring customers in with a human-looking face, feeding the illusion that real humans sit behind the wheel of this locomotive. But make no mistake: it is money which runs the whole show, given that each decision these leaders make is based on profit. All governments are corrupt by nature.  Like any biological life form, they will do anything to survive.  Both money and government behave like selfish life forms which need to survive and procreate.  Together they rule society with one and only objective: to resist anything and anyone who threatens economic expansion.  It was a grave mistake to create institutions which attained so much power and autonomy that they eventually became super predators of society. 

By enslaving humans to money, this system created an illusion of a level-playing field: in theory everyone has access to money if they work hard, exploit others, and exploit the planet.  We viciously compete with each other within an unsustainable, extractive, destructive and oligarchic system which masquerades as a democratic free market of opportunity for everyone regardless of place, race, salutation or occupation.  But this system only works if money and power are concentrated in the hands of the few.  And in a world where everyone is a slave to the tyranny of money, no one is ever free.  Democracy and equality can only exist as illusions.

The reason why humanity is unable to put the brakes on its self-destruction is that it long ago outsourced civilisation to the self-destructive money entity.  The life form in charge of our world is an increasingly sentient incarnation of profit which has found the perfect hiding place within government.  As long as global capital continues to parasitise government structures, this society will lack both the self-awareness and sovereignty needed to rise above its situation. There is currently no “off” switch and no human driver at the wheel of this automated train, because this system now completely owns us.

If all this sounds too dystopian to believe, it is because our only reality so far has been experiencing our enslavement to this symbiosis between power and money.  Throughout our history we have consistently challenged the very limits of our imagination, yet we continue to strictly forbid ourselves from dreaming of a society without money and personal wealth. If we were willing to prioritise long-term survival and real happiness over a self-destructive version of prosperity, such a society would not only be imaginable. It would be achievable.

Unfortunately, this civilisation has already conceded its defeat to the money entity.  Most humans today consider capitalism inevitable. This means that they consider natural destruction, the climate crisis, colonialism, exploitation, inequality and racism inevitable.  Money may have facilitated transactions, but from the very first days of its inception it significantly amplified fraud, corruption, limitless greed and other criminal activity.  As long as there are oligarchs who exploit and people who are desperate to be exploited, money will be there to facilitate this transaction.

There are real human lives at stake in the game of civilisation, but human existence appears to have taken the back seat in this money-administered necrosystem of profit, AI dystopias, and market optimization algorithms.  Human life has become a commodity within the consumaverse it created: its value now pegged to the fixed rate of diminishing returns of a global economic system going in reverse. Yet this bitter irony remains invisible.  While money runs the show, humans are wholly distracted.  People and government are locked into a meaningless, dysfunctional child and parent relationship: one where the child keeps hoping that the parent lives up to their expectations, while the parent is too addicted to power to even meet their basic obligations.  As the blame game between the haves and the have nots continues, global capital counts its profits from yet another blockbuster episode of the human soap opera.

George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist.

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