Parasitization

The slow-motion asphyxiation of a civilization, not through war or invasion, but by its own elites — once creative, now bloated, defensive, and immune to reform. Let’s cut into this rotting carcass and explore the concept with scalpels, not platitudes.

Let me explain this to you step by step.

I. What Is Parasitization?

Parasitization is when a ruling or managerial class no longer serves the functional needs of a society but instead reorganizes institutions, narratives, and economics to extract rent, obedience, and submission. It’s not always visible at first — the parasite mimics symbiosis for a while. It funds the opera. It builds a dam. It sends your kids to university.

Until it doesn’t.
Until it just wants dividends and docility.

II. The Chinese Variant: Bureaucratic Parasitism

In China, especially during the late Qing and then again in the Maoist twilight and its modern authoritarian corporatism, you see elite capture masquerading as “stability.” Bureaucracies ballooned, not to serve the people, but to perpetuate themselves. Social credit, surveillance, party loyalty — these aren’t for innovation. They’re for immobilizing the body politic.

Now? The CCP is in panic mode, because their own real estate Ponzi and tech clampdown just popped their future. A parasite that’s eating its own nervous system.

III. Soviet Case Study: Ideological Parasitism

The USSR began with revolutionary fervor — until it ossified into a gerontocracy where ideological orthodoxy replaced competence. The Nomenklatura were the priesthood of stagnation. By the 1980s, the USSR was a walking corpse in a fur hat. No feedback loops, no innovation, just black markets, demoralization, and vodka.

After the fall? Shock Therapy Capitalism™. An even more brutal phase where oligarchs became vampire squids inside the corpse of the worker’s state.

IV. American Neofeudalism: Market Parasitism

Ah, the U.S. — a nation that went from moon landings to monetizing copaganda TikToks in two generations. The parasite here isn’t ideology or bureaucracy. It’s markets — or, more precisely, the lie of markets. You have a financial elite and tech sector that has learned how to extract value without producing anything durable. Stock buybacks over R&D. Looting pensions. Turning housing into an investment class. Collapsing higher education into a racket. Every institution is gamified for short-term profit and grift — from the Pentagon to your local school district. And the moment there’s real crisis (COVID, say), you discover the emperor is not just naked — he’s dead, stuffed, and on sale as an NFT.

V. Common Threads of Parasitization

1. Looting over Legacy
The long-term disappears. Infrastructure rots. Climate? “Too expensive.” Children? “Let’s gut their schools.” Health? “Your GoFundMe isn’t performing well enough.”

2. Narrative Capture
Elites hijack media and education. The masses are kept in a fog of disinformation, drama, and dopamine loops. “Just vibes” becomes the national ethos.

3. Institutional Senescence
Systems become too rigid to reform. Merit is replaced with loyalty. Power flows upward; accountability dissolves.

4. Defensive Power
Cops get tanks. Billionaires get bunkers. Dissent is “extremism.” Poverty is criminalized. Surveillance becomes a growth industry.

VI. Parasites vs. Organisms

A parasite doesn’t care if the host dies — as long as it gets one more meal. The only way to resist this cycle is to restore metabolic vitality to society: feedback loops, competence, antifragility, innovation, and the fucking will to build.

But as you rightly note: where is the vision?
Where are the builders?
Why is the loudest political idea in the U.S. “make gas cheaper so I can drive to Walmart?”

VII. Final Thought

Parasitization is not a metaphor. It’s a phase change. Societies do not reform from this state; they molt, collapse, or are devoured. And right now, the host is groaning. 

 

ECONOMIC EXTRACTIVISM

• Top 10% own more than 80% of wealth

• Top 1% pay a lower effective tax rate than the middle class

• The majority of GDP growth accrues to financial services

• Real wages have stagnated for 20+ years

• Capital gains taxed less than labor income

• Unions crushed or irrelevant in most industries

• Social safety nets treated as “handouts” or moral failings

• Venture capital mostly funds scams, not real innovation

• Working two jobs doesn’t guarantee basic stability

• Crony capitalism is so normalized it’s called “networking” 

INSTITUTIONAL CORRUPTION

• Majority of elected officials are millionaires

• Campaigns cost millions, requiring oligarchic sponsorship

• Former politicians routinely become lobbyists

• Revolving door between government and industry

• Lobbyist-to-legislator ratio > 3:1

• Think tanks quietly funded by extractive interests

• Judiciary appointments are nakedly partisan

• Regulatory capture in >50% of national agencies

• Corporate immunity in cases of mass harm (e.g., opioids, spills)

• Political debate excludes systemic economic critique

---

MEDIA & PERCEPTION CONTROL

• Five or fewer corporations control majority of media

• Major outlets rely on access journalism, not investigation

• Manufactured outrage dominates headlines

• Culture war stories outnumber policy analysis 10:1

• Clickbait model rewards division, not clarity

• Surveillance capitalism monetizes attention and emotion

• Algorithms drive national discourse

• State secrets are more often leaked by whistleblowers than media

• Independent journalists face harassment, lawsuits, or bankruptcy

• Critiques of capitalism labeled “extremism” or “foreign influence”

---

INFRASTRUCTURE, HEALTH & EDUCATION

• Public transport is crumbling or nonexistent

• Rural hospitals and schools are being shut down

• Student debt exceeds the GDP of small countries

• Teachers use GoFundMe to buy basic supplies

• Schools emphasize testing over thinking

• Public universities are run like hedge funds

• Food deserts are common in major cities

• Infant mortality and maternal death are rising

• Preventable diseases return due to cost barriers

• No meaningful national climate adaptation strategy

• Sewage, water, or power failures affect millions

• Infrastructure decisions are guided by private equity, not engineers

• Life expectancy is declining despite rising healthcare costs

• Firefighters, nurses, and teachers can’t afford to live near their work

• Public parks, libraries, or pools are being closed for “budget reasons”

• Elite neighborhoods are fortress-guarded; the rest burn

CULTURE, PSYCHE, RESILIENCE

• National mythology is incoherent or contradictory

• Conspiracy theories fill the gap left by institutional failure

• Declining belief in upward mobility

• Widespread depoliticization or nihilism

• Basic political literacy is absent in >50% of the population

• Internalized fatalism: “It’s always been this way”

• Interpersonal trust is in collapse (neighbors, colleagues, strangers)

• Suicide, overdose, and despair deaths exceed war deaths

• Climate dread is normalized, yet policy unchanged

• Pop culture mainly consists of reboots, nostalgia, and escape

• Average citizen more emotionally invested in celebrity drama than local governance

• No shared public space where the elite are not insulated

• Hostility to expertise — except when it confirms elite narratives

• Widespread belief that voting is meaningless

• Nation cannot articulate a coherent vision beyond “growth”

CRISIS + TECHNOLOGY ADAPTATION FAILURE

• No unified national response system for future pandemics

• Key public health institutions underfunded, politicized, or gutted

• Climate transition delayed by fossil lobbying or fake offsets

• AI development driven by hype and capital, not ethics or public need

• No legal framework for AI/AGI deployment risks or labor displacement

• Critical digital infrastructure (power grid, communications) is outdated

• Government agencies lack technical literacy to regulate new tech

• Cybersecurity breaches in essential systems (energy, elections, water)

• Energy grid vulnerable to both climate and cyber attack

• Smart city projects run by private companies with no democratic oversight

• Space, biotech, or AI monopolized by a few tech billionaires

• Climate migration is not planned for — borders militarized instead

• Disaster response disproportionately protects elite zones

• Quantum, nanotech, or bioengineering policy is a decade behind reality

• Ethical debates on technochange outsourced to think tanks or PR firms

• Public is either techno-utopian or techno-apocalyptic — no nuance

• Majority of population lacks digital literacy to engage in tech policy

• Open source movements ignored or undermined by incumbent actors

• International treaties on existential tech risks don’t exist or are performative

• Surveillance tech used to control the population, not protect it