It’s hard to escape financial serfdom, but it can be done. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:
Just because nobody talks about financial serfdom doesn’t mean it’s not real.
Ours is a neofeudal economy of financial serfs in servitude to a Financial Aristocracy. The Financial Nobility / Aristocracy own all the debt and the serfs owe the debt to the Aristocracy. The serfs own assets that don’t generate much income, the Aristocracy owns assets that generate trillions of dollars in income. The serfs pay high tax rates if they make above-poverty wages, the Financial Nobility pay low taxes thanks to tax-avoidance scams arranged by the Aristocracy’s toadies and lackeys in the Central State. The serfs create value, the Financial Nobility is parasitic.
That we are powerless is one of the key social control myths constantly promoted by the Status Quo. What better way to keep the serfs passive than to reinforce a belief in their powerlessness against Financial Feudalism?
But we are not powerless. Our complicity gives the Financial Aristocracy its power. Remove our complicity and the Aristocracy implodes.
The pathway of liberation is to opt out of financial feudalism. Here are twelve paths any adult can legally pursue in the course of their daily lives:
1. Support the decentralized, non-market economy. The core ideology of consumerism and financialization is that non-market assets and experiences have no status or financial value. This includes social capital, meals with friends, projects done cooperatively with friends, home gardens and dozens of other decentralized activities that cannot be financialized into centralized market transactions. Identity and social status are established in the non-market economy by collaboration, sharing, reciprocity, conviviality and generosity.
