Instructor: Today, Class, we are going to learn of how wasteful some species, like humans, got in their pre-space-fairing era, and how it is similar to deregger behaviors in our modern times. Please turn your datareader to the articles on Food Waste, and how excess food was sent to rot in refuse pits, simply to keep the prices high, and the belief that it would do more harm than good to feed those who were hungry.
(It's true, too. In the USA, and many other nations, massive amounts of food is thrown into garbage bins, and sometimes things like bleach and other chemicals are thrown on top of it, or guards are put on watch until it rots, all to keep the prices high. Because factories "make too much food" and end up throwing a ton of it away as "waste product" rather than giving it to food banks and helping feeding those who are slowly starving to death.) -- Lessons
They say the love of money is the root of all evil, and they are not wrong. At a certain point, money gains the possessor all they need for comfortable living and reassurance against any given disaster. Beyond that threshhold, the only reason to have more money is to gain points against others who are playing the same game.
Make no mistake, it is a game played with cogniscent lives.
As I explain an era of Terran History, I wish all of you to compare the patterns inherent with the current-day Deregger polities. Their actions, reactions, talking points, and sundry grandstanding.
Beginning as we must with what we know of Pre-Shattering Earth. They are, after all, the origin of so many Deregger worlds. Corporate profit became the goal commercial organisations. The more money they had for shareholders, the better they felt about the world. With the rise of machinist industry, it became easier to make more of everything. Futurists dreamed of a world in which everyone could have their needs met, with leisure time for all.
This was only a dream. The corporate magnates realised they could make more money with less workers, and less focus on keeping those workers healthy enough to work.
Since slavery became taboo, those in positions of power found ways to create 'slavery lite' with prison labour programs, foreign sweatshops, and bootstrap mythology. This created an atmosphere in which most people were living to work, rather than working to live.
Towards the turn of the twenty-first century, Terran Common Era, the techno-geniuses rose to power. This was also an era in which someone of sufficient wealth could simply buy the appearance of genius.
His name is lost to time, the Shattering, and a certain amount of post-era erasure. Those who despised his actions took it upon themselves to ensure that his name died. We know that he inherited a fortune from racist policies and gem mines. We know that he had a succession of humorous ideas that gained him popularity and fame.
He has since been called, "a collection of bad ideas in a trenchcoat".
Heralding the worst idea and, perhaps, the initiation the Green Revolution, was a series of boasts on a communication platform popular at the time. He boasted he could end world hunger, and then refused to do so. He announced that he was going to buy said popular platform after a large amount of criticism against him.
This was the worst idea in a chain of other terrible ideas.
He had to scramble to gather the fortune that purchased the platform. Asset-rich, yet money-poor, he instigated some fast solutions to gain money. Including the direct sale of a previous identity assurance that was a means of security.
Defamatory messages started almost instantly. Medication, previously available only at a ludicrous mark-up was advertised as free. The corporations making that medication suffered a loss of value. For eight of the Terran 'dollars' a corporation could lose billions in worth.
The lawsuits also started almost immediately.
In another move to "trim the fat", this corporate nightmare made flesh also ceased a large number of essential operations because they were not necessary to the company he owned. This effectively locked many users out of programs that used those operations.
The class-action lawsuits were next.
With the ruin of this one man came the collapse of corporate supremacy. The feet of clay, as it were, eroded away. Yet some businesses insisted on carrying on as normal whilst the metaphorical dirty laundry was out for all to see.
It became clear to the entire planet that people were starving without need. People were homeless without need. People only had dirty water to drink, without need. People were suffering and dying so that people who didn't need money would have more.
Some actions, like food waste in supermarkets, were known. They weren't actionable before the artificial food crisis caused by the market collapses made by one man with bad ideas and too much money.
When the people are hungry and know they don't have to be, riots are the natural consequence. Reigns of Terror, much like the earlier revolution in France, become commonplace. And certainly, there were nations in which violence was the approved method of dealing with problems.
We still do not know how this failed billionaire perished. Some say he was dragged by his feet behind the rusty pickup of someone named 'Trev'. Some say he asphyxiated in a bunker on mars, relying on people who never followed him there. Some say he died of starvation in a homeless shelter, victim to the consequences of his own actions.
When there exists people who refuse to help people because it will cost them things they do not need... there will also exist the potential for revolutions like this one.
Society built on the pain of a certain demographic is always doomed to fail.
Next week, we will study how the "ugly food movement" was slactivism that stole food from both the needy and "food deserts". I expect some analysis of the structure behind it before the next session.
[Image by John Duncan on Unsplash]
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