The Legitimacy Trap
Why Both Silence and Violence Lead to the Same Dystopia
We’re watching a pattern emerge that should terrify anyone paying attention.
Corporate executives make decisions that kill people: deny lifesaving care to boost profits, ignore safety defects to flout expensive regulations, poison communities to cut costs. They face no meaningful consequences. No prison time. Often not even fired. Just golden parachutes and board positions.
Meanwhile, ordinary people crushed by these decisions have no recourse. Call customer service, get an algorithm. File complaints, they vanish into databases. Vote for change, watch politicians take corporate money. The legal system protects institutions, not people.
This creates desperation. Real, rational desperation.
And here’s the trap: The people at the top know what comes next. They’re counting on it.
This Isn’t Accidental
Let’s be clear about something: the people at the top aren’t passively benefiting from emergent market forces. They actively coordinate.
The same few thousand individuals who control the majority of global wealth sit on each other’s boards. They attend the same private forums - Davos, Bilderberg, the Business Roundtable. They fund the same think tanks that write the legislation their lobbyists push through captured regulators. They have each other’s direct lines.
When you’re about to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2030, you don’t get there by accident. You get there through a system designed, maintained, and defended by people who benefit from it.
This coordination is documented. We’ve seen it in the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, the revolving door between corporate boardrooms and regulatory agencies. We’ve watched synchronized lobbying efforts gut worker protections across multiple industries simultaneously. We’ve seen how quickly corporate talking points propagate across media outlets they own.
They don’t need a conspiracy. They have infrastructure.
When I say they’re counting on the violence, I don’t mean they’re passively predicting it. I mean they’re prepared for it. They’ve war-gamed it. They’ve already drafted the legislation that will pass in its aftermath. The surveillance systems are built and waiting for justification to deploy at scale.
This matters because you can’t fight coordination with individual action. You can’t disrupt a networked power structure with lone acts of resistance. That’s the whole point of the trap.
The Cycle
Unchecked corporate harm → eroding faith in institutions → eventual violent retaliation → justification for authoritarian crackdown → further proof “the system doesn’t work” → repeat.
Each act of violence, whether you think it’s justified or not hands them exactly what they want: public support for surveillance infrastructure, militarized corporate security, criminalization of dissent, and social credit systems. The corporate-surveillance state doesn’t need to be imposed, it gets demanded for “public safety.”
This is already in motion.
The Pattern is Accelerating
Look at the response to the Mangione case. Not from officials - from ordinary people. Jury nullification discussions going mainstream. Fundraisers for his defense. People openly saying they understand why someone would do it.
That’s not fringe anymore. That’s a legitimacy crisis going critical.
And it won’t stop with one CEO. It simply can’t, because the conditions creating that desperation are intensifying:
Healthcare costs crushing families while insurers post record profits
Algorithmic systems making life-or-death decisions with zero accountability
Corporations poisoning water, air, food - paying fines that don’t even dent quarterly earnings
Innocent people dying in preventable accidents while executives knew and did nothing
An entire generation locked out of home ownership, retirement, basic stability
Every day, more people hit their breaking point. Someone whose child died from a denied treatment. Someone whose family was killed in a crash from known defects. Someone destroyed by corporate malfeasance watching the executives walk free.
What Comes Next Isn’t Hard to Predict
More attacks. Not coordinated revolution: sporadic, desperate acts of vengeance. A bombing here. A shooting there. Escalating in frequency and scale as more people conclude they have nothing left to lose.
Each incident will be used to justify exactly what the powerful already wanted:
Expanded surveillance (for your safety)
Militarized corporate campuses (to prevent terrorism)
Predictive policing AI (to stop threats before they happen)
Criminalization of dissent (can’t let radicals inspire violence)
Social credit systems (to identify dangerous individuals)
The infrastructure of authoritarian control, gift-wrapped in security theater and sold to a traumatized public.
Here’s What Makes It a Trap
Both paths lead to the same destination.
Don’t fight back? They consolidate power unopposed, continue killing people for profit with impunity.
Do fight back violently? You hand them justification for the crackdown they wanted anyway, while changing nothing about the underlying system.
The executives you kill get replaced. The algorithms keep denying care. The safety corners keep getting cut. The profits keep flowing UP. But now everyone lives in a surveillance state that makes the PRC look quaint.
They’re counting on you not seeing this.
The powerful benefit whether you submit in despair or lash out in rage. Either response cements their control.
The Master Strategy: Divide and Conquer at Scale
But here’s the piece that holds the entire playbook together, the thing that makes the trap nearly inescapable:
They’ve made sure you’re fighting each other instead of them.
Media, tech platforms, and government have perfected the art of polarization. Not by accident. Not as a side effect. As a strategy.
How It Works
The Algorithm Economy of Rage:
Social media platforms discovered that anger and outrage drive engagement. Engagement drives ad revenue. So the algorithms learned to show you content that makes you furious… at the other political tribe. Tech companies profit while you waste energy on culture war bullshit instead of the class war that actually matters.
The Media Amplification:
Cable news doesn’t cover Boeing executives facing zero consequences for killing 346 people. That’s not “divisive” enough. But they’ll spend weeks on whether Dr. Seuss books should be published, or what bathroom people use, or whatever manufactured cultural wedge issue keeps you watching. The healthcare CEO gets shot and within 48 hours, media has made it about left vs right instead of top vs bottom.
The Government Facilitation:
Politicians on both sides participate gleefully. They don’t have to deliver on healthcare, housing, or wages if they can keep you focused on the threat from the other team. Republican or Democrat, they both take corporate money. They both answer to donors, not voters. But as long as you’re terrified of the other party destroying America, you won’t notice they’re both working for the same interests.
The Genius of It
When that Boeing plane crashed, who did you blame? When your insurance claim got denied, where did your anger go?
If you’re on the right: “It’s the woke activists and government regulation destroying American business!”
If you’re on the left: “It’s the MAGA cult and deregulation letting corporations kill us!”
Meanwhile, the Boeing executives and insurance CEOs are laughing all the way to the bank. Because you’re not looking at them.
The working class conservative whose job got shipped overseas and the progressive college grad drowning in student debt have the same enemy. But they’ve been convinced to hate each other over pronouns and flag etiquette.
Why This Matters for the Trap
Remember the cycle: desperation → violence → crackdown → more desperation.
Now add: But the desperate never organize together because they’ve been divided into hostile tribes.
A unified mass movement of people across political lines demanding executive accountability? That’s terrifying to power. That could actually work.
But when half the country thinks the other half is literally trying to destroy civilization, you can’t build that coalition. When you’ve been trained to see your fellow victims as the enemy, you can’t organize against your actual oppressors.
This is intentional.
The surveillance state doesn’t just need a justification (violence). It needs you to be too divided to resist it collectively. If people unified across partisan lines to demand accountability, to build alternative power structures, to make the current system ungovernable - that would be a genuine threat.
But if they’re fighting each other? The trap closes unopposed.
The Meta-Trap
Here’s the truly insidious part: even recognizing the polarization can become another division.
“The real issue is class, not culture war” sounds like you’re dismissing the legitimate concerns of people facing discrimination.
“We need to unite against corporate power” gets met with “You’re just trying to ignore racism/sexism/transphobia.”
And both sides have a point! The cultural issues are real. The class warfare is real. But when you can’t address both simultaneously because you’ve been trained to see them as mutually exclusive, you stay fragmented.
Meanwhile, the executives whose companies discriminate AND exploit workers face no consequences for either.
So What the Fuck Do We Do?
This is the question that matters. Because “nothing” isn’t an option, the pressure is building whether we acknowledge it or not.
The only moves that don’t play into the trap require building power that can actually challenge the system and breaking through the polarization designed to prevent exactly that:
Recognize the common enemy.
Your fellow worker who votes differently than you is not your enemy. The executive who’s destroying you both for profit is. The system that protects them is. This doesn’t mean abandoning your principles, it means recognizing who actually has power over your life.
Friends and neighbors.
The thing executives actually fear. Not because community organizing is magic, but because it represents collective power that can provide mutual aid, coordinate boycotts, build alternative institutions, and can't be neutralized by buying off one leader or passing one law.
Legal accountability frameworks.
Not fines - personal criminal liability for executives. Prison time for decisions that kill people. This requires capturing enough political power to pass and enforce such laws. Yes, that’s hard with government capture. It’s still more viable than hoping violence somehow works.
Alternative institutions.
Mutual aid networks. Cooperative businesses. Parallel structures that reduce dependence on the systems killing us. When you can’t reform power, you build alternatives that make it irrelevant. These work best when they cross tribal lines.
Mass movements that make business-as-usual impossible.
Not lone actors, but coordinated disruption at scale. The civil rights movement didn’t win through individual violence - it won by making the status quo ungovernable. This requires coalition-building across differences.
Starve the polarization machine.
Recognize when you’re being manipulated into rage at the wrong target. Question why certain stories dominate coverage while executive crimes get buried. Choose information sources that don’t profit from your anger. This doesn’t mean being apolitical, it means being strategic about where you direct your political energy.
Is any of this guaranteed to work? No. The odds are bad. Government might be too captured, time might be too short, people might be too atomized and divided.
But here’s what IS guaranteed: the path we’re on leads to dystopia. More surveillance, more corporate power, more desperation, more violence, more crackdown, and all of it with a population too polarized to mount effective resistance. A doom loop that ends with either authoritarian corporate feudalism or complete collapse.
The Choice Isn’t Between Violence and Peace
It’s between organized resistance that builds alternative power across political divisions versus disorganized violence that justifies authoritarianism while we fight each other.
The trap only works if we don’t see it. If we let desperation and rage drive us into exactly the response they’re prepared for. If we stay divided into warring tribes while they rob us all blind.
They want you isolated, desperate, lashing out individually, and convinced your fellow victim is your real enemy. Because they can handle that. What they can’t handle is coordinated mass action that builds durable power structures across the artificial divisions they’ve created.
The Clock Is Ticking
Every day without accountability breeds more desperation. More people reaching breaking points. More incidents like Mangione.
And each incident tightens the trap while the polarization machine ensures we can’t mount a unified response.
If we don’t find organized paths to force accountability - real consequences for executives who kill people for profit - then the violence WILL escalate. Not because it’s right or effective, but because human beings have limits.
And when it does, the people at the top will use it to build the prison they always wanted, with half the population cheering them on because at least it’s hurting the other team.
The window to avoid this is closing.
Not closed yet. But closing.
What happens next depends on whether enough people see the trap - all of it, including the polarization designed to keep us fighting each other - before it’s too late.
The question isn’t whether you’re left or right. It’s whether you’re willing to recognize who actually holds power over your life, and whether you can work with people you disagree with on some things to challenge those who are killing all of us.
Because if we can’t figure that out, the trap closes. And we all lose.
Except them. They never lose.
Unless we make them.