The mantra of “survival of the fittest” is a cruel deception. It assumes a level playing field, a fair fight, an equal chance. But we are not born into fairness—we are born into nets. Some inherit palaces. Others inherit its walls. And no amount of hard work will change that.
We are not lazy. We are not ignorant. We are spinning, never moving forward.
We labor endlessly for our families, yet get nowhere. Not because of personal failure, but because the system was designed to keep us exactly where we are. We are told that anything is possible if we work hard enough, but when we fall behind, we are abandoned. The resources we need—education, stability, generational wealth—are hoarded by the few, leaving the rest of us to fight over scraps.
This is not survival of the fittest. It is survival of the priviledged.
This Is on Purpose,
The exploitation of workers is not an accident. It is the foundation of our economy.
In every corner of the world, the dark underbelly of the system thrives: Young boys, knees deep in toxic rivers, sift through discarded electronic waste, scavenging for scraps of metal from gadgets that richer nations threw away. Pregnant women, bellies heavy with life, inhale pesticides as they harvest fruit, poisoning their unborn before they even take their first breath. Families labor in brick kilns, inhaling the suffocating dust of their own toil, stacking thousands of bricks under the searing sun, trapped by debts passed down through generations.
These are not isolated abuses. This is the system working as intended. This is the price we pay for keeping the gears turning.
Governments—local and global—turn a blind eye because suffering is profitable. The economy thrives on cheap labor and violence. Every revolt, every cry for justice is smothered before it can be heard. Laws are written in the blood of workers, not to protect them, but to protect the chains that bind them. Governments don’t resist the abusers. They hold their hands. They don’t fight the system. They are the system.
But why do we accept this?
Because we have been conditioned to. We’ve been numbed, distracted by the flicker of false choices. Told freedom is in a product, that satisfaction comes from a transaction. We are taught to look away, to drown the cries with the buzz of our phones, the hum of our TVs, our thirst for more.
Everything around us, everything we consume, everything we desire. Our homes. Our “luxuries.” Our very lives. It all comes from the shattered bodies of those who labor unseen, unheard, erased by a system that thrives on their invisibility.
And we—blind, numb, complicit—we continue to feed the machine, turning away so we won’t see the truth.
So That We Stay Prisoners
Labor is outsourced to sweatshops, some outside and some inside our borders.
In nations like the United States, China, and Russia, prison labor is the hidden engine of industry. Over 2 million people are incarcerated in the U.S., with at least 800,000 forced to work for less than .50 cents per hour (Bureau of Justice Statistics). They sew clothes, package food, harvest crops, build roads, electronics—for payment so low it cannot be called wages.
When they are released, they remain shackled by their criminal record, limiting their chances to work and live. As a result, many are pulled back into the system, where they become a source of profit once again. The system is designed to keep them trapped in a cycle of crime and punishment. There is no rehabilitation because it’s not the goal.
The U.S. prison industrial complex generates $2 billion per year from this scheme. (ACLU) Private prisons profit from filling cells, and corporations like Wal-Mart, Victoria’s Secret, and McDonald’s exploit the labor of the incarcerated (Bureau of Justice Statistics). This is slavery wrapped in bureaucracy.
We—sitting on the outside—are told to see prisoners as disposable, less than human. Deserving of their fate. But there is no justice when punishment is a revolving door for profit.
To The Point Of Sale
We believe the lie that hard work leads to success. But our work is not rewarded. It is extracted.
The cost of our survival is endless labor. We are more productive than ever, but only the elites see the profits. Hours increased. Wages declined. Job security evaporated. We work harder for less and are told to be grateful for these scraps.
Corporate executives take millions in bonus money, while we work two and three jobs at a time, sleeping in our cars, crying over the price of diapers. They evade taxes while we watch our public services crumble.
We toil under conditions set by others, too drained of energy to rebel. We sell our lives by the hour, so cheaply that we start to believe that we are worthless. Every exhausted evening, every missed milestone, every moment of joy we put off to chase the possible reward of hard work is lost.
But wage labor is the only life we know. And so we run. And run. And some of us may never realize: The finish line does not exist.