We live in an era where slavery is seemingly something of the past, but if you think about it… If in ancient times slave overseers used whips and iron chains, today they use the “social contract,” “patriotism,” and the “illusion of property rights.” The result is the same: you give away your only true capital – your time – to maintain a mechanism you never gave your consent to.
A tenant in your own yard
People walk proudly through their yards and say, “This is my land.” That is a lie. Try not paying property tax for a year, and you will see how quickly your “sacred” land returns to its true owner (the state). You are not the master – you are a tenant paying for the right to reside in your own house. Your property is a permit issued by the state to use it for as long as you are economically useful. If the state needs to build a railway where you stand, your “mine” will vanish in a single day with a single bureaucrat’s signature.
Time as a national resource
Most people give up almost half of their working life not to their dreams, but to maintaining the system. For half the day you spend at work, you are a debtor to the state. These hours belong to you just as little as they belonged to a slave a few centuries ago. The only difference is that the modern slave buys his own food, pays for his own shelter, and believes he is free because he is allowed once every four years to drop a piece of paper in a box, hoping for a different, slightly better overseer. With the emphasis on “hoping.”
Invented patriotism
From childhood, we are taught to “love our land,” which is the simplest way to turn exploitation into a matter of honor. A person is raised to be a “patriot” to a system that can use them at any moment, nationalize their savings, or freeze their accounts if they think or behave “wrongly.” Patriotism in this context is emotional manipulation to make you defend the prison in which you are kept. Your “duty to the state” is an abstraction used by those who have no duties toward you.
Illusion
Your entire freedom is an assumption that the system will follow its own rules. But history and even the experience of recent years show that the moment the state has a “need,” your human rights, property rights, and even rights over your own body become secondary. You are free only as long as your freedom does not interfere with the hum of the state machinery.
We are biological assets of the state. We have been taught to take pride in our chains simply because they are painted in the color of “freedom.”
Doesn’t it seem to you that the system’s greatest triumph is that we guard our own prison walls, afraid even to imagine what it would be like to be truly free?