A good concept to pass around is contrived desperation or manufactured desperation. The notion that desperation circumstances like the affordability crisis are intentionally developed by the ownership class so that workers will accept low wages, poor benefits, harsh conditions and abuse by their management and colleagues.

An extreme fictional example is in the TV series Squid Game. The players quit in the opening episode after they learn that the stakes of the game are their own lives, and only one out player would survive. But then (in the second ep) they return to their prior lives in which their financial situation is so dire, it compels them to return to the game.

The Epstein child sex ring is a strong non-fictional example of contrived desperation. The girls under Epstein’s employ quickly learned they were being groomed to be sexually exploited. But they were drawn from communities that offered few opportunities.¹ Girls quickly learned that they could escape their dire circumstances at home so long as they agreed to play ball, and be complicit in their own sexual exploitation.

We’re seeing another example in the US armed forces. All branches are achieving their recruitment quotas. Despite the news of the dire circumstances of the Abraham Lincoln. Despite that the military is deployed in an active theater. Despite that rates of abuse of enlisteds, especially of women, has only escalated since Hegseth’s tenure as SoD and his warrior ethos. Despite that the US is considering putting boots on the ground in Iran and Cuba.

When the ownership class is sufficiently removed from the working class, it loses touch, and stops empathizing, and then starts contriving desperation to get workers to stay in their place. Unions can be an effective countermeasure, though they are often busted by the political class and the police.

And that’s because a growing number of people are finding they have no other opportunities to stay above water. People are going into credit-card debt and skipping meals, and working 40+ hours a week. They are three very bad months away from being homeless already, and their numbers are growing.

¹ Epstein’s early victims were girls from post-Soviet Russia. During the collapse, the most popular career for young women was wage prostitute and children in the streets offering sexual favors for money were commonplace. It was an entire failing nation of desperate teenage girls.