Today, some forms of slavery have been outlawed, but one of the most insidious forms is more pervasive than ever. It is called debt, and virtually every major decision of our lives involves more of it.Snyder goes over some basic facts about how the current ruling class cleverly keeps us all in bondage, the modern era's disguised form of slavery.
I would like to add just two points which are left unstated in this article about ruling class control of our money. First, Snyder accurately states that the Federal Reserve is owned by private banks. So, what we have is an operation by the elite of the One Percent to disguise their control of our money behind the facade of what appears to be a government institution, the "Federal Reserve"; and then they add another layer of deception by having private banks "own" the Federal Reserve. This arrangement, in turn, hides the fact that these private banks are owned by the One Percent. Thus, we have this ruling class which really constitutes .01 of the 1% of the US population creating money "out of thin air", loaning it to our government, which is essentially the taxpayers of the US, and charging interest on this money. (Surely, you must know by now that the rich pay very little taxes.) Incidentally, since the recent collapse of the economy caused by banks packaging and selling home mortgages, which were obtained through fraudulent practices, the Fed has been giving a lot of this money away to the banks, which they own, interest-free to rescue them from bankruptcy.
Second, I'd like to make clear how this system, the formal origins of which go back to the 17th century in Holland and Britain, has worked its magic on behalf of the ruling capitalist classes. It is basically because this corresponded with the acceleration of productivity made possible by the era of Enlightenment when science and the scientific method created an understanding of the physical forces that shape our world. This, in turn, produced many kinds of machines which were powered first by water, then by coal, and then productivity really took off when humanity learned how to use fossil fuels to supply energy to the evermore sophisticated machinery.
This era witnessed a huge and accelerating transformation of nature's resources into goods under a system of profit for those who owned the machines. Such people are known as capitalists. This system produced vast amounts of wealth and most of this was accumulated by this tiny class of people. Wealth is readily transformed into political power which is one of the most addictive substances known to humans.
One glaring fact of human life, which capitalists must deny because such a fact undermines their faith in the system, which is the goose that lays so many eggs for them, is that we live on a finite planet. Up till this point in the story of humans this tiny class could count on the growth of economies to feed their addiction to wealth/power. Do you see where this is going? Now that they are approaching the limits of Earth's resource limits, the capitalist ruling class with their empire of client states and their NATO army are now engaging in land and resource grabbing more than ever before. This is why we are seeing so many wars and subversion of states like Ukraine. This is why we have seen so many cutbacks in services that affect the public. To make their wars and austerity policies acceptable to people in the US where their home base is largely located, they must constantly deceive the American people as to what they are doing. They do this through their control of media, education, and even entertainment.
Added to the threat of never-ending wars and police states is the looming threat of climate destabilization due to the use of fossil fuels. They've lied about this also until the evidence recently became so overwhelming that they can no longer deny it. Now they engage in such fantasies as migration to other planets and fueling their engines of production with some new exotic fuel such a fusion power.
