2025-07-11
Collusion and control
Disclaimer
Multiple structures in the world want to suppress some knowledge from reaching the public or it then becoming common knowledge.
Examples of structures
- religious institutions
- in context of this dicsussion, this includes fundamentalist atheist ideologies such as marxism, nazism, liberalism, etc
- families (parents, spouses, etc)
- political parties, governments
- schools
- ?
Examples of common knowledge that may be suppressed
- Direct harm - Institution is directly responsible for harming the person, such as through physical violence, stealing their assets or jobs, etc.
- Lost potential - Individual would be happier if they did something they wanted to, instead of the thing they're being controlled to do
- Loss of agency - Individual has suffered loss of agency and therefore loss of meaning / existential stuff, as a result of being controlled
- ?
Disincentives applied in order to exert control and prevent the knowledge from coming out:
- safety
- threaten violence if they disobey
- financial incentives
- create financial dependence, pull back finances if they disobey
- threaten violence if they attempt to obtain a source of income or savings you do not control (this is technically also a safety threat)
- social incentives
- ostracise them
- coordinate with other people in their life to also ostracise them
- control individuals with high social status - Many people look up to these individuals, so if these individuals too guilt and shame you, it is harder to break free.
Collusion
- Multiple institutions often coordinate to gain control of individuals
- Collusion to apply threats of violence
- Due to invention of nuclear weapons, only 9 countries' elites have truly independent policy. Even within them there is some coordination.
- Studying which of the 9 countries have collusion between which institutions and the government is important.
- Religious and political elites often coordinate with other political elites to gain control over people in various countries. This is true across multiple religions including atheist ones.
- They in turn can coordinate with family elders to enforce threats of violence, if the child disobeys.
- Most commonly this is done by persuading the family elders into the ideology.
- This can also be done by directly threatening violence on the family if the child disobeys. Example: North Korea
- Schools can also be used to apply threats of violence, although this is becoming rarer in the world.
- Collusion to apply financial dependence
- Political institutions often use their monopoly of violence to
- extract tax from citizens
- prevent citizens from hiding their assets
- prevent citizens from moving their assets out of the country, using capital controls on gold, cryptocurrency, foreign equity etc
- extract bribes from economic institutions. Depending on the balance of power they might also provide favourable policies in return.
- Similarly families and geographic communities often
- restrict children's physical movement to prevent them from finding sources of income outside their control
- Schools and colleges can restrict the set of careers one is aware about or has access to. Schools and colleges can normalise certain careers and denormalise others.
- Collusion to apply social incentives
- Collusion to spread ideology
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