Ethical Chaos: A User’s Guide
(Or: Why One Team is Playing Calvinball and the Other is Stuck Explaining the Rules to the Referee)
Ethical Chaos: A User’s Guide
(Or: Why One Team is Playing Calvinball and the Other is Stuck Explaining the Rules to the Referee)
Power doesn’t give a single, solitary damn about fairness. It doesn’t care about your nuanced arguments, your moral high ground, or how many think pieces prove your side is right. Power doesn’t read The Atlantic. Power doesn’t click "like." Power responds to one thing: pressure.
And guess what? The ultra-wealthy figured this out generations ago, which is why they don’t waste time waiting for the rules to work in their favor. They break them. Hell, they write new ones while you’re still out here trying to get everyone to agree on a definition of fairness. They employ ruthless, disciplined professionals whose sole job is to make sure power stays exactly where it is. They don’t waste time on decorum.
Meanwhile, the justice-minded are still playing by the "good sport" rules, hoping that if they just argue well enough, they’ll convince the very people benefiting from this rigged game to play fair.
And that’s why they keep losing. Not because their ideas are bad. Not because justice is weak. But because they are trying to bring manners to a street fight.
The Power Machine: A Professional Asshole Factory
The ultra-wealthy don’t win because they’re particularly smart. They win because they fund and deploy entire squadrons of professional assholes to get the job done. And those assholes are good at what they do.
Lawyers & Lobbyists (The Loophole Wizards): These people are literal spellcasters, warping reality so that even when rules exist, they somehow don’t apply to the people paying their salaries. You thought you understood tax law? That’s adorable. They invented sub-clauses while you were watching cat videos.
Consultants & Bureaucrats (The Friction Scientists): Their job is making sure that even the simplest thing (voting, healthcare, labor protections) is an absolute bureaucratic hellscape for you, while remaining a breezy, paperwork-free paradise for their clients.
PR Fixers & Media Operatives (The Narrative Sculptors): Got caught committing a financial war crime? No problem. A few well-placed articles, a well-timed cancel campaign against someone else, and suddenly you’re the real victim.
Politicians & Judges (The Henchmen): The wealthy don’t make the rules. They buy the people who do. It’s a beautiful system if you’re in on it. If not, well, enjoy another round of "thoughts and prayers."
This isn’t a loose collection of bad actors. It’s a coordinated playbook that ensures power stays where it is. Think of it as rugby: full-contact, no helmets, and absolutely no regard for your delicate sense of fairness.
The Playbook of Justice: A Game Designed to Lose
On the other side, those fighting for fairness tend to reject these tactics, insisting that winning the right way is the only way. This means their team is packed with people who, while noble, are tragically underpowered:
Academics & Policy Wonks (The Argumentarians): Incredibly intelligent, devastatingly well-researched, but tragically unaware that nobody in power is actually listening to them.
Activists & Protesters (The Petitioners): Passionate, organized, and essential, but still laboring under the delusion that the ultra-wealthy can be shamed into submission. They cannot. They drink shame for breakfast and wash it down with tax-free champagne.
Good Governance Advocates (The Proceduralists): People who still believe the system will work if we just refine the rules. Meanwhile, the opposition is already redrafting the next set of tax loopholes.
Progressive Politicians (The Consensus Seekers): Stuck in a never-ending quest to bring people together, blissfully unaware that their opponents have zero interest in compromise and are, in fact, already rewriting voter districts.
This is a baseball team trying to play against a rugby squad. One side is trying to reason with the referee; the other side is tackling the referee and rewriting the rulebook while he's unconscious.
But It Wasn’t Always Like This
The greatest lie ever sold was that power has always been this entrenched. That wealth has always been untouchable. That the fight has always been unwinnable.
Bullshit.
The reason you get weekends is because union leaders fought, bled, and sometimes died to rip them out of the hands of industrial overlords who were perfectly happy working you to death.
The reason women can vote is because suffragettes literally firebombed mailboxes and made life miserable for anyone who stood in their way.
The reason civil rights exist is because activists shut down economies, blocked traffic, clogged jails, and forced the hand of power until it had no choice but to listen.
We used to know that change doesn’t happen through consensus; it happens through conflict. We used to have assholes for justice.
The ultra-wealthy learned from those defeats. They studied the tactics that stripped power from their hands, then co-opted them. And now, the moment someone suggests breaking a norm to actually get something done, suddenly it’s all about civility, decorum, and proper process.
Funny, isn’t it?
Anger Asymmetry: Why They Win and We Don’t
Here’s the imbalance at the heart of modern politics: The ultra-wealthy cultivate ruthless enforcers, while the justice-minded push out anyone who isn’t "nice."
That has to end.
Justice needs its own operators. Its own mercenaries in suits. Its own ruthless enforcers of fairness. Because fairness does not happen naturally. It has to be imposed. And if we keep fighting with one hand tied behind our back, we will keep losing.
The Fix: Stop Playing Their Game
The ultra-wealthy don’t play fair, and fairness is not won by waiting for them to.
Stop expecting institutions to enforce justice when those institutions are already owned by the opposition.
Stop waiting for the system to work when the other side is actively dismantling it.
Stop assuming moral superiority is enough. History isn’t written by the most polite; it’s written by those who refuse to be ignored.
The only reason we aren’t winning is because we abandoned the playbook that actually works. It’s time to take it back.
Because here’s the thing:
The ultra-wealthy do not fear your outrage.
They do not fear your votes.
They do not fear your carefully crafted moral arguments.
They fear that you will remember how your ancestors won.
They fear that the frustration you feel right now will transform into action. That instead of arguing about the correct way to resist, you’ll start resisting effectively.
So the real question is: Are you going to let them be right?