One of the lens I see the world through is “economic feudalism” which posits that the ruling class are trying to enslave the rest of the world by making them so impoverished they have no choice except to comply with whatever instructions their corporate overlords give them (e.g., vaccinate or lose your job and the ability to feed your family).
When you see the world through this lens, it is truly remarkable how methodical the billionaire class has been over the decades in monopolizing the world’s wealth and how many different institutions they’ve propped up who all support their agenda (e.g., consider how much unchecked power their transnational corporations have).
Because of this, there has been a general corrosion of many of the rights and freedoms and functionality we expect from democracies (or democratic republics) in parallel to a tidal wave of destructive corruption which has infested almost every institution. For example, in previous eras, even with sociopathic governments that viewed their citizens as entirely expendable, if corruption ran unchecked to the point it threatened the stability of the country, it would be rooted out. Yet, in the last few years, we’ve seen policy after policy be passed which benefit the billionaire class at the expense of everything else (e.g., our national economy has become much weaker since COVID-19).
As a result, a variety of institutions (e.g., the World Economic Forum) have been established which are controlled by the billionaire class and simultaneously wield a great deal of power throughout the “democracies” of the world but are simultaneously accountable to no one besides the wealthiest members of society. In turn, as you might expect, more and more of the world’s wealth is being hoarded by these oligarchs while everyone descends further into poverty.
Hellbound and Down 