The Hunger Games
has captivated readers and audiences alike over the past years since its
release. It has sold over a million copies and pulling in almost 700 million at the
international box office. It is easy to guess why. The book is a fun
and full of non-stop excitement. The read is well-paced and keeps you on edge.
Love, romantic conflict, violence, beauty, sex, nostalgia, the book has it all.
Here at The Anarchist Review the question we put forward to the reader is what does The Hunger Games mean to our society? That is a question we attempt to answer. (Note: this is a review of The Hunger Games book not its sequels or the movie.)
There is no shortage of doom porn floating
around libertarian circles. The Hunger Games feels like it could fit in nicely next to 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Brave New World for a perfect libertarian doom salad. The common theme of such libertarian reviewers is that our future is held in these books unless we change something.
Indeed, there are many parallels between Panem and our current situation, but first for the benefit
of the .1% of the population who has not seen or read The Hunger Games let me give a recap of the scenario. A country called Panem in North America is
divided into 12 districts and the Capitol. Each district specializes in
producing some item, most of which goes to the Capitol. The districts are
varying in wealth, but are mostly poor. The closer the connections one has to
the capital, the wealthier. The protagonist is from the coal-producing District
12 which is located in current Appalachia. The Capitol is in the Rockies (Salt Lake
City?). The Capitol rules the citizenry
with an iron fist. To further demonstrate its power over the districts and
avoid rebellion, once a year they hold the Hunger Games. Basically two people
(a boy and a girl) between the ages 12 and 18 are chosen from each district to
battle to the death for the entertainment of the Capitol. Every year 24 kids are thrown together and
only one survives, the Victor, who is lavished with wealth and fame. Obviously
going to the games is a death sentence, so it is dreaded in the districts.
As of now Washington D.C. does not hold gladiator type games
between teenagers from the different states. Also, D.C. is much closer to Appalachia
than to the Rockies. So not a perfect fit, however there are some very relevant
comparisons between The Hunger Games
and today’s society.
In Panem your wealth is tied not to your work ethic or good
ideas, but rather where you were born, or rather how close to the capitol you
were born. The Capitol controls who is wealthy, who succeeds, who is poor and
who fails. With federal spending exceeding three trillion dollars, and billions
more handed out to Wall-Street via QE and other monetary trickery of the
Federal Reserve, the Panem system is not that much different than our own. Maybe you are laughing at me saying this is a
ridiculous comparison. But is it?
The U.S. government spends 40% of GDP. That means if you
take everything that all 300 million people make, the government spends 40% of
it. That is a load of money. Google had revenues of 15.7 billion last year,
Wal-Mart did 469 billion. The U.S Government spent 3,455 billion dollars in
2013. That means the spending power of the largest company in the world was less
than half, less than a seventh of what the U.S government unleashes in terms of
spending power. Google, the supposed king of the internet can only unleash 0.5
% of what the Federal government can. Companies make or sell products that we choose to use. The
U.S. government simply pulls the money out of our paychecks without permission.
Imagine how much you can influence who is wealthy and who is poor when you can
outspend any other single entity by seven times? Also when you are able to take
arbitrary amounts of money from people’s pocket books and distribute it to
whoever you wish?
The unfortunate reality is that so much of success is not
based on a company’s ability to provide a good or cheap product. It is based on
the company’s ability to get on the government’s good side. Look at the Sugar
industry in the United States. In 2013 The Florida Sugar Cane League, the
American Sugar Alliance, and American Crystal sugar spent over 3.5 million
dollars in lobbying. As a result Sugar in the United States has a large
protective tariff and over the past 40 years has cost as much as double in the
U.S. as opposed to outside it. Every regular person in the United States is
essentially paying for politicians to get wined and dined by the Sugar Lobby.
They pay in higher sugar prices, increasing the price of all their food and
increasing the wealth of lobbyists, politicians, and Sugar corporations.
Look at the successful business in the world. Look what
industries are hiring and giving big bonuses to their CEOs? Go to job fair.
What businesses are there? If it is a technical/engineering job fair I can
almost guarantee who you will see: government supported monopolies (i.e.
utilities) the government (bureau of land/water management), and government
defense contractors (Boeing and Lockheed Martin). Why is that? It is because
they have a steady stream of “guaranteed” dollars flowing in from the Capitol. 625
Billion dollars were spent last year alone on building the war machine. That is
625 billion dollars taken out of people’s pockets, people that actually produce
something people use, like computers and software and hotels and houses, in
order to pay for bombs and a bunch of engineers to sit around and make death
machines. If they produce a product that
no person would ever buy, it matters not. The money is there.
Go to none-engineering career fair. There will be a large
swab of companies from education, healthcare, and finance. Three industries
which are heavily regulated and subsidized by federal and state governments.
Once again the government has chosen who succeeds and who fails.
In The Hunger Games, the
people in the Capitol do not work at all; they spend all their time on
frivolous activities. The people in the Districts have incredibly strict laws
that they cannot leave their areas, and barely have enough food to live.
What about here? For the most part, the capitol is not
filled with people who spend their time dying their hair other colors and
getting plastic surgery. Washington D.C I have heard actually has a pretty hard
working atmosphere; everyone is a busybody trying to get things done. Which is
scary. However, what do they really
accomplish? They write words on a piece of paper. They make laws. The tell
people well where to move their guns. They produce nothing. They produce
nothing that people can use. Their paper-passing is just as frivolous as the
lives of the hair and prep team from the Hunger
Games. The protagonist says this of them “It’s funny, because even though
they’re rattling on about the Games, it’s all about where they were or what
they were doing or how they felt when a specific event occurred. ‘I was still
in bed!’ ‘I had just had my eyebrows dyed!’ ‘I swear I nearly fainted!’
Everything is about them, not the dying boys and girls in the arena.”
Is it too much of a stretch to assume that politicians may
be just or even more callous than these hair-dressers? They get their money by
looking good and sounding nice and not offending people. They get their money
by getting donations from wealthy people in trade for special privileges that
hurt everyone else. They send thousands of men and women to die in Iraq and
Afghanistan and they sleep peacefully at night in their suburban homes paid for
by the labor of productive Americans. They argue about laws and send papers
around from one office to another while men are dying because of their actions.
Is this any less frivolous, any less callous than the speech of the hair
dressers?
True, we do not have most the country working to pay for the
lavish lifestyle for the politically connected, except we do. We do not
callously ignore the deaths of people who die in the name of the country, yet
we do. Since 2004, when drone attacks begin, as many as 951 civilians, which
includes 200 children, have been killed by drones in Pakistan alone. This does not include the wedding guests who died in Yemen and other deaths around the world
Are we that far from The
Hunger Games? Is our society really that much different than the one we
look upon with such abhorrence? We let over 4,000 of our own die in Iraq so we
could be unified and patriotic. Are we that much different than a society that
lets 24 of its own fight to the death to maintain peace and order in society?
Is this not exactly what the deaths of all our military is all about? That is
why we have parades and ceremonies for the survivors, for the Victors if you
will. Is there a difference?
Hopefully by now the reader is questioning if we are not
exactly who the Hunger Games is
talking about. You may be convinced that The
Hunger Games is the day after tomorrow for America. Well I hate to burst
your doomsday bubble, but it is not. Despite my radical political opinions, I
affirm that this will never happen. There will be no Hunger Games here. Ever.
How can I say that? What evidence is there?
We are not at the base of state power, we are at the pinnacle
of it. This three-thousand year-old paradigm of the state is fading with
Slavery and other barbaric institutions of the past. Will the powers that be
relinquish voluntarily? No, of course not. Evil will not relent. Evil people
will hold on with all they have to the source of power and livelihood. The
state has created millions of dependents. This is of course to the state’s
advantage because it means millions are interested in keeping it alive and
well. But in the end it cannot. The state is simply inefficient. Violence and
evil do not help people, do not produce good results, and do not produce
anything of value. The state cannot compete with ingenious and innovation and
entrepreneurship. It just cannot. Despite all the taxes, all the regulation and
other violent actions the state will raise against free people attempting to
serve others, but in the end it will be to no avail. The progress of man cannot
be stopped.
Generally the villain is not taken down by the good guy, the
villain is taken down through his (or her) own vanity, pride, irrationality,
lust for power, or whatever it be. His own arbitrary authority is what will
implode and destroy the bad guy. And so it will be with the state. Technology
will get better so that free-seeking people will be better able to escape the
state. Bitcoin. Sea-steading. The internet. All sorts of things will help to
set us free. And the state will be left alone, and all the evil it harbors,
crumbling under its own complete inefficiency. There is no stopping the
revolution. There is no stopping the revolution.
In these hunger games it will only be evil that will be
starving. And I can’t wait.
Let the games begin.
No comments:
Post a Comment