(Chomsky: Redesign the Economy)

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😤 You Did Everything Right… and You’re Still Drowning

You:

• Stayed late
• Took the job
• Took the loans
• Took the hits

You believed the lie:

“If you work hard, you’ll succeed.”

But now you’re working harder than ever — and barely surviving.

That’s not a personal failure.
That’s the system doing exactly what it was redesigned to do.

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🧠 Chomsky: “Redesign the Economy”

In Requiem for the American Dream, Chomsky explains how in the 1970s, the economy was deliberately rewired — shifting from rewarding labor to rewarding ownership.

This wasn’t a glitch.
It was a strategic redesign to funnel power upward — away from workers, and into the hands of those who control capital.

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🏗️ From Labor to Leverage: How the Economy Left You Behind

🛠️ Then: Labor Powered the System

• Factory jobs were stable
• Wages rose with productivity
• Workers had bargaining power
• The middle class was expanding

If you worked, you could build a life.

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💰 Now: Labor is Disposable

Why pay workers $25/hr to make something…
when they can move numbers and make billions?

The modern economy isn’t built on creating real value — it’s built on speculation, automation, and asset bubbles.

You stopped being the engine.
You became the fuel — burned for someone else’s climb.

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📉 The Evidence:

• Worker productivity has increased +61% since 1979
• Wages? Up only +17%
• Meanwhile, CEO compensation is up +1,460%

The rich aren’t working harder.
They’re working the system.

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🧲 The “Hard Work” Scam

Here’s how it goes:

1. Convince you rest = laziness
2. Make you tie your value to output
3. Drown you in debt
4. Shift blame onto you
5. Celebrate your burnout as ambition

This isn’t work ethic.
This is economic warfare with a smile.

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🎮 The GameStop Rebellion: When the People Glitched the Casino

In 2021, Reddit users noticed Wall Street hedge funds were planning to short GameStop — to profit off its collapse.

So they said:
“No.”
And bought the stock in mass.
They drove the price up — and cost Wall Street billions.

It was one of the biggest financial disruptions from the outside in modern history.

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🛑 And Then? The System Hit Pause.

Trading apps like Robinhood (ironically named) froze buying — but not selling.
The people could no longer raise the price.
Hedge funds were protected.

“Free market” was exposed as a controlled casino.

And when working-class people started winning?
The house pulled the plug.

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🧨 This Was the Modern-Day Kent State — Without the Blood

They didn’t use bullets.
They used buttons.

The message was the same:

“You got too loud. You got too close.
Sit down.”

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🔥 The Truth?

The system doesn’t reward hard work.
It rewards ownership.
And you were never meant to own anything but your struggle.

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🧠 Ask Yourself:

• Why does everything cost more, but you’re making the same?
• Why are billionaires celebrated for hoarding, but you’re shamed for resting?
• Why does the stock market soar — while you can’t afford groceries?

Because the game was redesigned.
To extract. To exploit. To erase resistance.

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Continue to➤ Principle #4: Why It Feels Like You’re Always Paying the Price

to continue the principles ➤ Return to All 10 Principles

➤ to Go Deeper ➤ The Courtyard of Awakening →

If they rewired the economy to work without us…
what else have they done to keep us quiet, exhausted, and obedient?