Control

When I ask you who rules the world, I imagine a couple of possible answers. One is that you laugh and say that no one rules the world, and that different countries are ruled by different political systems and political parties. And that's fair, I guess. But let's nonetheless explore a couple of different answers in this post.

Another answer might be that there's a shadowy cabal of wealthy people pulling the strings of the world's politicians, secretly ruling our lifes from behind the curtain. You know, like the Wizard of Oz; "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" Although this answer is an entrance into the world of wild conspiracy theories, it's also in my opinion a better answer than the one in the introduction. At least this answer acknowledges the fact that, although the world is divided into many different countries, there's a world economy, and that wealth translates into power, and that the power of wealth is greater than the power of politics.

However, there's no need to conjure up some shadowy cabal to explain the reality of wealthy people ruling the world; it's all done in plain sight. Also, the "shadowy cabal" version often implicates the Jews as the evil man behind the curtain. Or lizard people, or baby-blood drinking Democrats, take your pick. Or piQ rather. The best answer as to who rules the world is simple: people with money. And if you're stuck with the very first answer, you should know that this goes for individual countries as well, even for individual cities and towns; they're all ruled by the wealthy.

Although the truth of this is plain to see, still many people will not accept it. Since they're not willing to criticize the socioeconomic system that produces mega-wealth next to abject poverty, they'd rather blame this huge and obvious power-imbalance on some unseen evil group, whose intentions are purely malicious. This is going nowhere and only results in deeper divisions among ourselves, and unrealistic world-views in which lizard people or Jews are blamed for everything. Which is nonsense, obviously. There's a better way to explain the current condition of humankind, which I'm going to share with you in one or two paragraphs.

Ask yourself: what does it mean to own something? It means that you have control over that thing. If you want to drive my car, you'll need my permission. I have control over my car. You only get to enter my house if and when I've invited you to visit me. If we simply substitute "ownership" with "control," it becomes way easier to see how the wealthy, who own all important stuff in the world, have control over the world. If you want to work at my facility, you can only do so if I hire you. Which means you've accepted the wages I've offered you. And if you demand a higher wage, I'll hire someone else. If you vote in a politician who sets some minimum wage, I move the facility to another place. And the politician knows this, I've made sure they do, so they'll probably won't even come so far as to set a minimum wage for fear of losing my facility and a lot of employment for the politician's constituency.

This is how ownership of material stuff, all of which fall under the term "means of production," translates into control over you and your life. It's capitalism. Capitalism is defined by the private ownership of the means of production, which all but negates its second pillar; the free markets. Markets can't be free because capitalism's first component translates into control. This is so simple to understand that it baffles me, really, it truly astounds me that anarcho-capitalists and capitalist libertarians even exist. Capitalism's first commandment, the accumulation of private wealth, is the same as the accumulation of private control. And still people are surprised when they realize that yes, a few hands full of people rule the world. With this simple explanation comes a simple answer: the means of production can not be in private hands, but need to be in the hands of the workers. That's socialism, or, put differently, that's democratization of the economy.

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