# The Other American System of Government I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the real political divide in America. It’s not left versus right, or red versus blue. That’s all a smokescreen to keep you from noticing the real axis. It’s the working class, or people that work for their money, versus the investor class, or people whose money works for them. This is the real fight, and everything else is just bread and circuses. And then it hit me. We’ve been looking at the structure of America all wrong. We were taught growing up that America is a democratic republic (remember that from Social Studies?), but the real power structure in America is feudalism. And it always has been, despite the founders’ rejection of hereditary aristocracy. The United States *presents* itself as a democracy, but beneath a paper-thin facade, it operates as a feudal system where power is inherited, wealth dictates influence, and the working class remains bound to their lords. At first the feudal lords were white, male landowners, who were the only people allowed to vote. But the new lords are even worse. The new feudal lords are corporations: immortal, sociopathic, nonhuman persons. Corporations, not humans, own nearly everything (even billionaires usually incorporate themselves for tax breaks and liability protection). Corporations never die (as long as they don’t run out of assets), and they’re bound by Wall Street’s current definition of fiscal responsibility to prioritize quarterly profit above all else, no matter what lofty ideals their corporate officers espouse. The investor class, corporate shareholders, are the new nobility. They benefit from inherited wealth and capital gains that grow exponentially without any labor on their part. Like I said, these are people whose money works for them, and they don’t have to lift a finger. Politicians are the vassals, bound to their corporate donors rather than to their constituents, particularly in the House of Representatives, where each House member starts fundraising for re-election the instant they’re sworn in. Republican or Democrat, they don’t work for you, but to do the bidding of those that really keep them in office. And they know when they’re done playing at democracy, there will be a cushy, well paying job for them from one of their donors. The working class, people that work for their money, are the serfs. They are bound to their corporate lords for everything: wages that don’t keep pace with inflation, a title to impress people at parties, even their access to healthcare. Losing a job in America is traumatic because your entire safety net depends on your employer, and when you lose that, the clock starts ticking to losing everything: your home, your health, your very life. The media fills the role of the church in classical European feudalism. The media, in whatever flavor of bullshit you prefer, on cable TV or on Facebook, sets the agenda and shapes the narratives to keep the serfs in line by pitting them against each other instead of their oppressors. And the media, not surprisingly, is owned by the corporate lords. This is structural, and nothing new. The United States has always been at least part feudal. Like I mentioned before, at first it was the landed gentry of white, male landowners. Slavery was a feudal system, as was the Jim Crow sharecropping that followed it. Feudal power has waxed and waned, with the New Deal weakening it until Reagonomics made feudalism ascendant again. The gig economy and overwhelming student debt are feudal structures, limiting upward mobility even among the “professional” classes. Interestingly, land ownership has been the signifier of independence for thousands of years, but here in the 21st century, most working class Americans will never *really* own land. A lot *think* they do, but what they really own is a mortgage on property owned by a bank (a corporation). “Buying” a house with a mortgage is just another form of sharecropping, especially considering how many people fail to outlive their mortgage. And now, with AI and other forms of automation, corporate lords are finding their serfs ever more disposable. The biggest driver of profits is to reduce costs, and humans cost more than just about any other corporate expense. Fewer humans equals more profits at the same revenue. So more and more humans are finding themselves severed from their feudal lifeline, left out in the cold with nothing, not even healthcare. Corporations have to do this, they tell us, to maximize shareholder value. Nothing they can do about it, they snicker as you pack up your belongings into a small cardboard box (at least most of the time they don’t charge you for the box). This system has been in place, in one form or another, for almost 250 years. There’s little chance we can actually get rid of it now. This is what America is, what America always has been. But accepting the truth doesn’t mean you have to like it. How can we thrive anyway in this corporate feudalism? First off, don’t play the game. They want you to believe you live in a democracy, that you have a choice in how you’re ruled, and that your enemy is another worker who believes differently than you, rather than an investor oppressing you both. You don’t have to buy into that illusion anymore. You can, with a lot of work, step outside the system and really be free. The first step on that road is to prioritize financial independence over consumerism. This is not fun, I’ll admit. You have to turn your back on a lot of the fun distractions to save enough money to really not need a feudal lord, but it is possible. The key to live as modestly as you can. A guy I was in the Air Force with never spent more than he made as an Airman Basic, setting up automatic transfers to an inconvenient out of state bank for the difference every time he got promoted. When he left the Air Force, he was able to go without a job for years and do what he wanted. Once you have some money, use the investor class’s tools for your own benefit. Not just buying stocks, which are volatile and annoyingly subject to human perception of their value. Buy assets. Anything you own is either an asset or a liability. Liabilities cost you money, and assets make you money. They generate money on their own, without effort on your part. Government bonds and CDs are kinds of assets, but so is real estate. Buy a house (outright, not with a mortgage) and rent it out, and now you have something that makes money for you. Lastly, rely on your fellow serfs and help each other. Mutual aid groups and co-ops are great ways for people to multiply their power and separate themselves from corporate spheres of influence. Together we can make make a better world, if only for one small group at a time. Even small shifts—saving aggressively, investing strategically, and cutting reliance on employer-based benefits—help break the feudal chain. The lords aren’t going anywhere. But they can’t rule those who refuse to kneel. The question isn’t whether you’re in their system—the question is how much of your life you let them own.