Debt as a tool of social control
I've always found it rather amusing that we congratulate ourselves on escaping the feudal system. We look back at the medieval serf, bound to the land and sweating for a local lord, and we feel a comforting wave of superior pity. We're free, after all. We can choose our employers, vote for our preferred flavour of political disappointment, and spend our weekends precisely as we please. But if you step back and look at the magnificent machinery of the modern economy, you'll see that we haven't actually abolished serfdom. We've simply digitised it and rebranded it as a line of credit.
The old methods of social control were admittedly crude. If a government wanted to keep the populace quiet, it required an expensive apparatus of heavy-handed police, drafty dungeons, and public displays of unpleasantness. These days, the state doesn't need to brandish a truncheon to keep you in line. The banking sector will happily do the job for them, and they'll get you to sign the contract yourself.
Take the ultimate symbol of adult respectability, which is the mortgage. I love the fact that the word itself comes from Old French and literally translates to a death pledge. There's a beautiful, dark honesty in that.
Imagine a young couple, full of rebellious energy and dangerous ideas about changing the world. They want to challenge authority and live life on their own eccentric terms. Then they visit an estate agent and buy a lovely three-bedroom semi-detached house in the suburbs. The moment they sign that thirty-year agreement, the transformation is instantaneous. They don't need a policeman to tell them to behave. The sheer terror of missing next month's payment turns them into the most compliant, law-abiding citizens imaginable. They'll endure any amount of corporate degradation, nod politely at their most insufferable superiors, and arrive at the office five minutes early every single morning.
The death pledge has done its work. It has successfully amputated their capacity for mischief.
Then we have the sheer genius of the modern university system. In my younger days, universities were notorious hotbeds of radicalism and civil unrest. Students had the irritating habit of marching through the streets, protesting against wars, and demanding the downfall of the establishment. The authorities spent decades trying to figure out how to manage these troublesome youths. The answer they stumbled upon was breathtakingly elegant. They decided to charge them £27,000 for an undergraduate degree.
Now, before a young person has even fully developed their prefrontal cortex or learned how to properly iron a shirt, they're saddled with a financial burden that will haunt them for decades. It's a masterclass in behavioural conditioning. By the time they graduate, they aren't thinking about overthrowing the system. They're frantically calculating how to secure an entry-level job at a corporate consultancy firm just to service the interest on their debt. They can't afford to be radicals because radicalism doesn't offer a competitive pension scheme or a company car. They've been tamed before their lives have even started.
The beauty of debt as a mechanism of control is that it functions entirely through psychological coercion rather than physical force. It relies on our own vanity and greed. We're bombarded with advertisements telling us that our self-worth is directly tied to the things we own. We need the latest smartphone, the shiny German hatchback on the driveway, and the luxury holiday in Mallorca. Since our actual salaries are pathetically inadequate for this lifestyle, the financial system steps in with a reassuring pat on the back and a shiny piece of plastic.
Suddenly, you're trapped in an endless cycle of borrowing to buy things you don't need to impress people you don't care about. You become your own jailer. The credit card statement is the prison wall, and the monthly minimum payment is the guard patrolling the perimeter. You can't quit your mind-numbing job, you can't take a year off to write a terrible novel, and you certainly can't tell your boss what you really think of him. You're completely locked down, and the entire system runs smoothly because everyone is too exhausted and indebted to throw a spanner in the works.
It's a beautifully quiet form of tyranny. It doesn't leave bruises, it doesn't cause riots, and it doesn't look bad on the evening news. Instead, it just creates a society of deeply anxious, impeccably behaved individuals who are far too worried about their credit ratings to ever dream of making trouble. We're a nation of willing captives, polished and polite, marching to the beat of a spreadsheet.