Thumbscrews

Overt and covert violence take different routes

to the same end—extortion and forced compliance.

Thugs don’t need to break legs to get what they want:

if they’re just a little bit patient the victim will yield.

It’s just a matter of time once the thumbscrews turn.

Just as a decent person has to restrain

his baser desires despite their potent resistance,

so society must restrain its rich

and powerful members from their baser desires

and make them be decent—even if they resist.

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You don’t need to be shackled to be unfree. Most people obey not because they’re weak, but because the system leaves them no room to resist. Until we fix that, economics and politics will stay cruel.

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“No one is forcing you to work here.”

That’s the standard reply to any complaint about wages, conditions, or abuse. In theory, it’s true. In practice, it’s entirely false. Most people don’t work because they’ve got nothing better to do. They work because they have to. Rent is due. Groceries cost money. In this country, you get healthcare through an employer.

The threat isn’t a literal gun to your head. It’s eviction, homelessness, and hunger—which is just a slow motion gun to your head. The capitalist fiction that the worker bargains with his labor on an even playing field with the employer is nonsense. The “free” labor market is always unfree. The capitalist can simply out-wait the worker until desperation compels surrender.

This is what structural violence looks like: no blows, no blood—just engineered and enforced dependence. You do not have to beat people into submission if you can compel them with stern necessity. So long as basic survival is conditional, the appearance of violence depends entirely on how cruel the system is willing to seem. It doesn’t need to break legs—only force people to choose between obedience and destitution. But if it doesn’t mind the public seeing its cruelty out in the open, it can break legs if the government allows it.

The surreptitious form of violence does more than shape the economy. It shapes character. It trains people to endure indignity silently. It rewards the appearance of loyalty and punishes resistance. Over time, the worker’s spirit hardens into resignation. Most learn to suppress their rage. Others learn to direct it downward toward scapegoats—which increases the cruelty and hard-heartedness coursing through society.

The logic of economic coercion has its analog in politics. Those who benefit from the system learn to protect it. They moralize their comfort and criminalize the desperation of others. Tax cuts for the wealthy are touted as incentives, but food assistance is reviled as theft. The big banks always get their bailouts, but Medicaid recipients have to prove they work. Billionaires deserve to get cushy perks, but the disadvantaged don’t deserve a helping hand. The dignity of the poor is trampled by the rich, who lose their own dignity in the process.

There are alternatives. Worker cooperatives distribute power rather than concentrate it. Universal basic income gives people room to breathe. Employee ownership creates incentives for shared success. In Norway and Finland, social protections are structured to remove humiliation. In parts of Spain, co-op networks offer meaningful work without dependence on corporate hierarchies. These aren’t utopian solutions, but they indicate what is possible when survival isn’t held hostage.

The truth is blunt. If politics feels cruel, it’s because the economy permits cruelty. It rewards those who extract value from the defenseless. It disciplines the defenseless who dissent. And unless capitalists and politicians are restrained by government from unleashing their worst instincts, first chaos, then tyranny ensues.

A decent society must insist upon decency. That means designing an economy that does not coerce, in which survival isn’t used as leverage and people are free to reject outrageous demands. Without that, the violence will continue. It will wear a suit. It will make “deals.” It will shake your hand. And it will remind you, with a smile, that you’re always free to leave.