Silent Massacre: The Fuel Called Hope Has Run Dry

The Ponzi scheme commonly known as multi-level marketing (network marketing) looks, at first glance, like a “revolutionary” way to become rich. In fact, there seem to be many people who succeeded through that method, and it appears that if I follow them, I too will surely succeed. But the moment “I” join a Ponzi scheme, that scheme comes to an end and is bound to collapse. Because I am the last one. A Ponzi scheme may seem as though it will succeed, but because the speed at which the network expands grows faster than the size of humanity itself, it is destined to fail.

In fact, this Ponzi scheme bears a strange resemblance to the way our economy grows. What a Ponzi scheme sells is not a “product,” but the “illusion” of effortless success. That success is eerily similar to humanity’s fantasy of a perpetual-motion machine: no matter how often it is proven impossible, people cannot give up the dream. Yet unlike “perpetual motion,” which would require manipulating the natural world, people dreamed that “perpetual growth” might actually be achievable by human beings. What humanity witnessed in the 20th century was the reality that the more it tried to build such a paradise on earth, the more what was actually created was “hell.” Through experience, humanity gave up the dream of the perpetual-motion machine called the Communist Party. And then it dreamed once again of another perpetual-motion machine.

This time, that delusion came alive within the market economy. It was the dream that if one could build a real engine and supply energy, one could possess “perpetual-motion energy.” Those who believed that anything was possible through the state built the engine called the “central bank” and redirected the market’s spontaneous source of energy to the central bank. Now the force driving the market is no longer its spontaneous power, but the artificially supplied power of the central bank. Once the central bank began supplying energy, society seemed, as if by magic, to come alive. As though mocking the free market economy, the central bank indiscriminately supplied money. The more difficult conditions in the market became, the more power and legitimacy the central bank gained. Then, at least for a while, the dying market often appeared to revive.

Even now, with economic conditions depressed by COVID, the central bank is firing money into the market like a “Vulcan cannon.” Nevertheless, economic conditions are not improving at all. Rather, the market is dying. Nor is that all. Suicides are increasing day after day across every generation. Especially striking are the suicides of people in their 20s, who should be the most hopeful. All this time, the government has taken tribute from the people’s income, promising to prepare them for old age, prepare them for unemployment, and take full responsibility for them from cradle to grave without leaving out a single thing. It was a promise to make the people happy. But as time passes, the result we face is worsening indicators across the board, suicide across all generations, and especially the suicides of young people full of dreams and hope.

That there is no free lunch in this world is an eternal truth. For the world consists of debit and credit, of yin and yang. We must ask what has served as the energy source for the money that has fueled growth while the central bank lowered interest rates and sprayed money across every generation. The economy is not something that automatically grows simply because, as the government says, money is printed from a currency-making machine. The economy grows only through “blood, sweat, and tears.” In the meantime, our economy has used hope as fuel in place of “blood, sweat, and tears.” And it extracted that fuel from the younger generation, the one with the most dreams and hope of all generations, and injected it into the system. Our society has grown by plundering their hope. And now those who have no more hope left to be taken, those across every generation whose hope has been stolen, are dying deaths of despair1. The film The Matrix is no longer a “fantasy” movie.

In Suicide, Durkheim says, “Every suicide is social murder.” It is neither easy nor simple for an individual to give up his or her life. Complex social phenomena are embedded in that decision. Those dying now are not simply suicides. They are killings by the state, deaths of despair. I feel deep anger toward the state that has driven them to death. Right now, the government is carrying out low-intensity economic slaughter in the broad sense. Watching young people and the self-employed kill themselves day after day, watching those driven out of their jobs die in traffic accidents while delivering food on scooters, I cannot possibly bring myself to say that their poverty is their own responsibility.

J’accuse... I accuse. As I offer comfort to those who died, blaming every kind of misfortune on themselves without ever knowing the cause.

1 Angus Deaton, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

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Original title: 조용한 학살, 희망이란 연료는 바닥났다

Author: Kyung-mo Son

Date: 2021-10-20

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=free_opinion&pn=10&idx=24278