unimportant/politics/collusion_and_control.html

2025-07-11

Disclaimer

• Quick note
• Incomplete

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
  • ? todo
• Collusion to spread ideology
  • ? todo

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