A Grand Theory on Modern Market Slavery

Everything you own materialistically in life originates from its own market – be it your car, your tooth brush, or even your adorable dog. But have you ever thought about the possibility that you could be a product? And what potential market could sell you as the product? It turns out that the more your existence can be digitized (via social media and search engines, for example), the more you can be packaged (digitally) and sold. As gross and obnoxious as that sounds, even such a market does not make it to what I call the Unholy Trinity. The Unholy Trinity features 3 markets that don’t just productize you, but program you into being a slave who continuously and willingly (!!) works for the betterment and continued sustenance of these markets themselves. They do this because these markets are rooted into the most fundamental human needs.

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Introducing the Unholy Market Trinity:

• The Job Market
• The Housing Market
• The Stock Market

In this article, I analyse each of these markets, and try to explain why and how they program the typical person into a willing slave. This analysis takes into account the majority of a typical population, and does not consider edge cases like social fallouts or huge inheritances.

The Job Market

On the most fundamental level, the job market fulfils the need for one’s food. One needs to find a way to barter in order to put food on the table, and a job is one of the most efficient solutions that the civilised human race has invented. A person learns a trade, specialises in it, and exchanges his or her services with an agency (such as a job provider) that pays for the specialist’s services with money. This money is then used to buy food, which is also made by specialists doing their ‘jobs’ for other agencies. If we extrapolate this system to every human need, we see that a Specialist <<–>> Agency relationship is established for every need (such as transportation, entertainment, etc.), making a web of such relationships that drive our entire civilisation. A Specialist for one commodity could be an Agency for another, and vice versa. It breeds a society of give-and-take; a healthy way to go about life.

But, alas! This idealistic give-and-take society never made it far into its existence. Human greed stood in in its way, and still stands tall. The Specialist ended up being traded as product in the market, while Agencies ran arbitrage and exploited the prices that were paid for the ‘Specialist-product’. These so called Agencies are driven to optimise for monopoly and domination. They are driven to be the only Agency that gives, and make sure that everyone else takes from them. Such an Agency manifests itself in the form of a super power country or a powerful organisation that monopolises entire sub-markets. What this phenomenon does in turn is that it skews the Specialist <<–>> Agency relationship to such an extent that almost none of the Specialists play the role of an Agency any more in their lives. As a result, the Specialist loses autonomy in life, and is by definition, forced to offer his or her pre-determined speciality, and is forced to take everything he or she needs from the pre-determined Agencies. This ‘enforcement’ of a pre-determined role is where phrases like ‘burnout’ and ‘my job is sucking the life out of me’ originate from. If the Specialist wishes to change what he or she has to offer, by default, he or she loses her title of ‘Specialist’, and risks being shot down by the system. This risk creates a strong fear in the mind of the specialist. Proof of failure of people who tried otherwise only amplifies this fear. The rat race to climb the corporate ladder seems to be the only viable option left.

Education is a wonderful thing. But I question the education obtained from universities. Universities have grown to cater the needs of the job market to such an extent that they could be rebranded as Specialist Factories (and I don’t blame them for it; they’re merely a reflection of the current state human development). If a person has invested so many years of his or her life into becoming the PhD he or she is today, it makes it all the more difficult for him or her to offer anything else to the market, and all the more fearsome to venture into anything else after years of investment. As a grand result, the skewed Specialist <<–>> Agency system corners the Specialist into giving up autonomy, and continue offering the speciality he or she ‘has chosen’ to offer for the rest of his or her life.

The Housing Market

On the most fundamental level, the housing market fulfils one’s need for shelter. One has notably two options: to own or to rent, i.e., to offer the commodity or to consume it. There are no other options. It is worth mentioning here that this is completely a human construct. Unlike the wild wolf pack that lives in the woods, we as human beings have created a system in which our existence alone mandates us to pay. In other words, we owe money to someone merely because we exist (again, it is our own doing, not a conspiracy). In this sense, the housing market ensures that you are subscribed as a consumer by default. And there is (almost) no way out.

Furthermore, social programing (all cultures seem to be converging here) has found a way to assign social status to one’s role in the housing market. This has in turn created entire derivative markets where Agencies (real estate companies, for instance) sell consumers on the notion of owning a roof by borrowing from other Agencies (banks). This consumer may then choose to remain a consumer or become an Agency by offering a part of his or her roof(s).

I hope you realise by now what is going on here. Like in the case of the job market, there exists a relationship here: the Consumer <<–>> Agency relationship. And just like the previous case, this relationship gets skewed, with the sense of growth and greed being the prime driving factors. More and more people end up being just Consumers, while a tiny fraction of the population plays the role of Agency. The vast majority of people work themselves into a corner so hard, that they require themselves to be slaves of the job market just so that they can afford to maintain the social status of being able to afford a luxurious condo, thereby making them slaves of the housing market. The thing to be noted here is this slavery is prevalent in both low-earning individuals as well as high-earning individuals. The majority remains enslaved, with debt sucking away whatever was left of the typical individual’s sense of autonomy.

The Stock Market

On the most fundamental level, the stock market fulfils one’s needs for Agency. You read that right. The Agency is the commodity in this market. Agencies (companies that largely aim to be monopolies) sell portions of their business activities (shares) to investors, thereby granting the investors the right to agency. In reality, human greed dances passionately, displaying its raison d’être. The investors end up inheriting Fake-Agency, while the actual Agencies game the system into retaining their original agency, as they suck money out of selling Fake-Agency all the while. As you might have guessed it, there exists a Fake-Agency <<–>> Agency relationship here.

In all fairness, the perceived cost of this ‘Fake-Agency’ commodity increases in value over a sustained duration of time in the case of extremely successful businesses, and a reasonable number of ‘Fake-Agency’ wielders do gain monetary benefits in the process, enough to earn them a real sense of autonomy. But the key phrase to note here is that this happens ‘over a sustained duration of time’. This is where secondary derivative commodities like ‘Financial Freedom’ and ‘retirement plans’ get sold in the market. The Fake-Agency wielders hold on with hope for years, whilst enslaving themselves to the job market and the housing market so that they can fund their Fake-Agency purchases from the stock market.  

If you have read this far, and think that you are not participating in the stock market, then think again. The following are some of the services / industries that are either directly or indirectly deriving from the stock market: government pension schemes, retirement plans, mutual funds, banks, loan schemes from banks, insurance services, monetary growth policies and bond rates issued by governments, etc.

Ultimately, the vast majority ends up being enslaved by the Unholy Market Trinity: the job market, the housing market, and the stock market.

Full Disclosure: The following are my proposals for breaking the chains of market slavery described above. I do not recommend these proposals to anyone. I am currently in the process of implementing these proposals in my own life, and am a living, walking experiment of my own designs for an ideal lifestyle.

“The cook must ideally be the first one to try his own recipe.”

– Paraphrased quote from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Breaking the Job Market Slavery

The question is: Should the specialists start generalising? Is this a discussion of specialisation or generalisation? The answer to both questions is ‘no’. The key to breaking the job market slavery is (for the Specialist) not to generalise, but diversify. My experience is that the market and the system want you to believe that you can specialise only in one thing; one trade. But what if you wish to, and can specialise in multiple, diversified trades? All of a sudden, your physics professor does not want to support your venture into micro-biology, given the fact that you are already pursuing your PhD in physics. He penalises your so perceived ‘loss of attention’ from your paper publishing ventures. All of a sudden, your engineering job’s manager looks at you critically for venturing into archaeology. He penalises your so perceived ‘loss of focus’ inside your corporate cubicle. Neither your professor nor your manager is to blame here. They are merely extensions of the market’s cut-throat demands exerted in human form. They were most likely programmed by the university. The University, in its current guise, was conceived less a couple of hundred years ago, with the main aim of producing compliant workers for factories. The industrial revolution is out-dated. Therefore, this is, in my opinion, a system that is no longer sustainable or practical.

Not giving into the threats and fears of venturing into new fields and trades takes a certain amount of courage (not for the faint of heart or for the ones with deep commitments in life). Imminent failure most probably awaits the adventurer. But what if one could design systems in which one single failure does not wipe out one’s entire existence? What if one could fail many times over until the value of diversified specialisation kicks in? That’s where (I propose that) the road to breaking the job market slavery starts, and the journey of meaningful work through daily tinkering begins. That’s when one starts doing what is meaningful to one’s own code of existence, rather than being enslaved into what the market thinks one ought to do for the rest of his or her life. The aim should be to do meaningful work whilst maintaining a reasonable hold of autonomy over one’s own life (Agency!).

Breaking the Housing Market Slavery

The whole concept of really ‘owning’ something is, in my opinion, an illusion. None of us takes anything with us beyond the grave. With this set as the founding thought, it makes sense to design a lifestyle that empowers the present whilst maximising the potential of the future. Thinking mathematically, and thinking in consequences to worst case scenarios helps in breaking the housing market slavery. Debt is not a bad thing by itself. Selling one’s autonomy in exchange for debt (exchanging agency) is a bad thing. As an illustration, if I am eyeing a house, or an apartment, or a luxury condo, I first ask myself if I have the means to purchase it with cash or equity. If I do, I would not buy the new property outright with my cash or equity, but instead, I would use my cash or equity as collateral to buy cheap debt that funds my purchase (I get to own the property at a lower cost than if I were to purchase it outright). If I do not have the cash or equity, I would tread very cautiously. If I am considering loan options, I first assume that I have bought my property. Now, after my hypothetical purchase, what if I lose my employment status right after I bought it? How long can I sustain my newly acquired lifestyle without a job? Is it 6 months? Is it a year? Can I re-gain lost ground within this time frame? This kind of thinking decouples my home ownership from my job situation. This decoupling signals the first layers of the chains being unshackled. This also puts me in my place in a humbling way, as I am more wary of living within my means, with the worst case scenarios considered.

Furthermore, I decouple my social status from my housing status (easier said than done), and invest as much of my capital as possible into increasing my own value, instead of investing it in real estate at the cost of my own productivity and / or autonomy. In my opinion, investing in one’s own productivity is one of the best forms of investment. After I have deployed my capital efficiently into increasing my own skills and productivity, I start looking at other forms of investing it, and a potential property ownership starts emerging into the picture. This gives me a better chance of my rate of productivity (rise over unit duration) output being high enough for rent not to be a problem. That is, until my net gains increase to such an extent that I have sufficient purchasing power for a property (former situation from the illustration), and my real estate purchase is completely decoupled from my job or income status.

Breaking the Stock Market Slavery

At the time of writing this article, I’ve made the most progress with breaking the stock market slavery (considering the entirety of the Unholy Trinity). This could be an entire article by itself. Without going into micro-details, what I would say is: it is important to realise that the concept of ‘retirement’ really is just a human construct, which is just around a couple of centuries old. I would like to argue that this concept is dead in the water, and people need to wake up to this fact. Delegating responsibility of increasing one’s value for the future (via retirement plans, for instance) means one is also foregoing control of one’s own life (Agency!). In order to start with increasing one’s value over time, it is absolutely essential to understand exactly how money is created by the banks and governments, and how the value of any arbitrary currency is sustained and influenced. Assuming a 40 hour work week, a hypothetical person working from 30 years of age to 65 years of age has roughly 72800 work hours at his or her disposal. Let’s say that he or she earns a million US dollars (that would be $1,000,000) at the end of these 35 years. The US Federal Reserve alone has allegedly pumped in (created out of thin air) 9 Trillion US dollars (that would be $9,000,000,000,000 ) into the system over a period of 6 months as COVID hit the US. 6 months have a total of 4320 hours (this time, I’ve considered 24 hours per day). Where did these 9 Trillion dollars flow into? Answer: Do your own research, and always, follow the money!

If a technically independent body can create out of thin air, in roughly 0.06% of the time duration, 900000000% (you read that right) of what our hypothetical person worked all his or her life to make, and pre-determined ‘Agencies’ are ‘inheriting’ slices of this 900000000% with the aim of making a profit on top of each slice, it begs the question: could gaining knowledge about this market help you earn more than our hypothetical stock market slave in a lesser duration of time? Could it help you break your slavery to the Unholy Market Trinity? The alternative is to remain naïve, and by default, be subscribed as a slave to this market.

I do not expect or want you to trust anything that is written here; I’m gladly promoting doing your own research. In fact, critical thinking and scepticism are skills I am promoting via this essay. If you are a tad bit more sceptical and critical after read this far, this essay would have served its purpose.

Conclusion

Two words: Autonomy <<–>> Agency. One should aim to sustain sufficient (subjective to each individual) autonomy via agency. Agency (noun) is the common root of slavery in all three markets of the Unholy Trinity, and agency (verb, i.e., our actions aimed at sustaining autonomy) is the key to breaking the chains of slavery. Time will tell how far my own life designs based on this thesis will get me. One way or another, we shall find out!

If you have read this far, I am thankful, and hope that this long essay has imparted thought provoking perspectives to your life.

If you wish to get informed about any of the research work behind this thesis, please feel free to get in touch.

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References: Taleb, Godin, DeMarco, and Dalio.