Thread | Brutkey

First, the #guild leaders borrowed for expansion. Then artisans for materials. Finally, workers for survival. The woodcarver or silk merchant who once led his guild now worked sixteen-hour days servicing interest.

'Debtors don't revolt,' Cosimo de' Medici told his son. 'They're too busy calculating interest.'

(2/6)

Coach Pāṇini ®

@paninid@mastodon.world

By 1434, without raising an army, the Medici controlled #Florence more completely than any duke. When rivals accused Cosimo of tyranny, he laughed: 'Why would I need a crown? I hold everyone's mortgage.'

Today's system has extended the formula.

In 1960, over half of 30-year-olds were married homeowners. Today it's 13%. A 75% collapse in achieving what was once ordinary.

Life's milestones became financial products.

(3/6)

Coach Pāṇini ®

@paninid@mastodon.world

Marriage: merger requiring due diligence and term sheets.
Home: leveraged asset requiring perfect timing.
Children: cost centers with negative ROI.

The words themselves are the confession: we learned to speak about ourselves in the language of our own depreciation.

The Medici discovered that armies control bodies, but #debt controls minds.

(4/6)

Coach Pāṇini ®

@paninid@mastodon.world

Modern markets discovered something darker: you don't even need traditional debt. Just price stability itself beyond reach. Embed the chains in housing prices, childcare costs, health insurance deductibles.

Make precarity the baseline. Make #security the #luxury good.

The Medici principle was that ‘the poor should neither freeze nor starve, but they should always fear they might.’

(5/6)

Coach Pāṇini ®

@paninid@mastodon.world

Modern #markets went further. They ensured you'd never quite afford to be fully human: always one payment away from losing what little stability you'd rented.

The system begins consuming itself: asset holders extracting from a shrinking base of consumers who can no longer afford to reproduce.

When a species accepts that its own continuation is economically irrational, what happens next?

We're about to find out.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jatinmodi_marriage-home-children-lifes-milestones-activity-7360316536747651072-wMhD (6/6)