People Power

Setting the Record Straight on the Relative Value of Capital vs. People Power

Dune is an epic SciFi adventure story about the rise and fall of civilizations. It is very much an allegory about our own world. You don’t need to have seen the movie to grasp the moral of the story, which is essentially summed up in a single line, when Duke Leto Atreides tells his son Paul, the protagonist of the story, that, “Here on Calladan we’ve ruled by air power and sea power. On Arrakis, we need to cultivate Desert Power.”

This statement points directly to the key element of our socioeconomic system that holds the key to peacefully disrupting the present power structures holding the people of the world in bondage.

What Duke Leto was referring to with the term ‘Desert Power’ was not sand, or spice, or giant worms or any other material resource. He was referring to the natives of the planet — the Fremen. He was referring to People Power.

Here on Planet Earth, Humanity is faced with a similar situation to the fictional Fremen people of Arrakis. Powerful forces have gained control of our planet's resources and means of production, and are using that control to increase their power relative to the masses, who live in a world of deprivation and stress.

The means by which they have accomplished this (over the course of millenia, but accelerating rapidly in the industrial age) is by inverting the value of capital relative to people.

Today, if you want to accomplish something great, the first step is what they call ‘capital formation’. That basically means you gather the financial investment together, at which point you can afford to pay for all the labor needed to execute your plan.

Ultimately, every great work is the product of many people applying their talents, training, and attention to it in a coordinated fashion for a sustained time. The compensation those people receive is simply the instrument by which their attention is focused on the given project.

In the realm of industry and commerce, people are considered simply another resource and another expense on the Income Statement — not the amazing change agents that we really are.

To be sure, every single multinational corporation has some HR/PR statement about how people are their most valuable resource, yada yada. And they aren’t necessarily lying. Surely they recognize that the collective skills and attention of people is the most critical component of their operations.

But make no mistake — that’s all we are: Components. Resources. And like any other cost of doing business, management is going to reduce the cost of that item as much as they possibly can in order to increase shareholder profits.

As noted above, this has been going on for a very, very long time. By reducing workers to commodities, the power elite have managed to accumulate the vast majority of the capital and resources for themselves, leaving most people with nothing to trade for the necessities of life other than their time.

Those at the top of the pyramid justify their position by simply referring to Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations, and the supposed axiom that the ‘Invisible Hand of the Market’ is constantly readjusting values relative to supply and demand so that we get an optimal outcome.

This is a lie.

There most certainly is an invisible hand affecting markets, but it is not invisible because it is some mystical force of nature, but because it wishes to remain hidden. This invisible hand has its weight firmly down on the side of wealthy elites.

How great is this market advantage? Who can say? But when you consider the fact that the top 1% of the population owns roughly as much wealth as the bottom 90%, that gives you some idea.

But their influence is certainly much greater than even those numbers would suggest, because while the 1% are relatively few people with more closely aligned objectives (to make more money and increase assets), and have the freedom and resources to press their cases, the masses are spread out in a zillion different directions and spending all their time in survival mode.

It’s a completely unfair system. And at this point there is no apparent solution in sight.

It’s true that many people do quite well in this system, and live comfortable lives. But far more are struggling day after day with stress, anxiety, and constant financial pressure. Sadly, wherever they fall on this spectrum, the vast majority of the population are inured to this state of affairs, accept it as inevitable, and just try to get along as best they can.

But again, the fundamental premise on which this system is based — that people are simply commodities subject to the market — is false.

Think about any product: the cost of that product on the market is almost entirely based on Human intelligence — not material resources.

Take a gold Rolex watch that sells for $40,000, for example. There’s probably about $7,000 worth of gold in it. The rest of that cost goes to the people who designed and manufactured the watch, including all the people down the supply chain who designed and manufactured all the components, instruments, and equipment used in the processes of assembling the final product. Even the value of the gold itself largely consists of the cost of the people who mined it, refined it, sold it, and delivered it.

As Nate Hagens has so clearly spoken about, the actual value of resources on this planet has historically been effectively free. Anyone with the means to harvest, mine, or otherwise acquire resources could do so for the investment of their time and effort in doing so.

The trick has always been to harness People Power to gather and process the raw material, and then roll the ownership of the final product — in which is concentrated the full value of the collective efforts of all the people involved — up to the elites, in order to increase their leverage in the future.

The strategy of getting people to do the work of acquiring and processing resources began at least as early as the ancient Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian empires. It has continued unabated ever since.

After all these centuries of concerted effort by the elites to augment their position, it isn’t surprising that most people feel that there is simply no way to overturn the status quo or change the system.

But, deep down, the elite know they and their capital are still no match for the Power of People, as long as those people are united as one. At some level they realize that the value of their capital is based on the fact that it is currently the one reliable way to assemble people into a coordinated workforce.

They are simply counting on the fact that the people have been so thoroughly divided and confused — as if in a modern day Tower of Babel — that they will never have to deal with a unified and coordinated populace.

It seems like a pretty safe bet.

I, on the other hand, believe there is a way for the common folk of the world to unite in a coordinated manner in order to bring about a far more optimal and equitable situation. I believe this because I can see it.

The solution has been before my eyes for a long time now — long enough for me to examine it from every angle, steel-man the counter-arguments repeatedly to expose any issues, and think about how it could actually be implemented.

And now the time has come for me to share it.

If you are still with me, I encourage you to keep following. I have only begun to set the stage for how this revolution will play out, if only you and others like you will show up.