How the Zero Theft Movement Fights the Rigged Economy

The Rigged Economy in History

1. 9th-15th centuries: Feudalism (kings & queens) stratified society, endowing the royal few with disproportionate power. Commoners, given little choice, had to accept their position in society and lack of upwards mobility, internalizing their ‘inferiority’ as part of their nature. It took Jean Jacque Rousseau’s work on the Social Contract (and General Will) to wake up the commoners to the fact that all humans should be treated equally.
2. 18th century: Before ‘the father of economists’ Adam Smith grew to prominence in the 18th century, workers were locked into “apprenticeships” until their employer, ‘the master’ of that profession, allowed them to compete. The master’s authority, in effect, stifled market competition and got him cheap labor. He could prevent his apprentice from creating their own business for 8 to 12 years. Moreover, many apprentices were driven out of the profession before they even received their master’s ‘blessing.’ Adam Smith’s magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations, dismantled this master-apprentice relationship, resulting in the end of a layer of the rigged economy.
3. 19th century: Throughout American slavery and the Jim Crow era, the aristocracy implemented a devious scheme to keep the working class down. If there was a group (in this case, Black people) that had it even worse than the working class, then the latter would think their situation wasn’t so terrible. Black people unequivocally suffered the most, but the working class, as much as they perpetuated and often promoted racism, were unknowingly manipulated by the privileged class.       
4. 20th century: During the industrial revolution, wealthy business owners cited ‘traditional family roles’ as justification for paying women a fraction of men’s salaries (40-60%). This systemized sexism allowed the rich to generate major profits on the backs of women they paid poorly. It wasn’t until the hard-fought success of the suffrage movement (1919) that women managed to receive rights they deserved from the beginning, including equal pay. 

In every case, crony capitalists and the privileged class duped the working class into accepting the rigged economy. This crime, while undoubtedly grave, elicited only grumblings and occasional complaints. The working class was conditioned by those in power to downplay the rigged economy as a ‘small annoyance,’ a simple ‘fact’ of the world. Evidently, they needed a jolt, a booming wakeup call, to truly see that they were victims of theft.

Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) and the 2008 Mortgage Crisis: A Modern Example of the Rigged Economy

CDSs allowed the rich and powerful to steal a trillion dollars during the 2008 mortgage crisis. Just looking at the term, “Credit Default Swaps” sounds like complicated Wall Street jargon, with which most of us are unfamiliar. We glossed over, and sometimes even ignored, CDSs when we heard about it, thinking it wasn’t worth the time and effort to understand it. Wall Street’s lingo lulled many of us to sleep, essentially.

Here’s the secret, though. CDSs aren’t complicated to grasp; they’re really just ‘insurance.’ When investors bought back home mortgages, they also made sure to get CDSs for their deals. The insurance guaranteed any financial loss they incurred would be paid back by the insurance company. As it pertains to the 2008 mortgage crisis, investors could see a financial crisis on the horizon and bought as many high-risk mortgages as they could. The problem is: investors specifically made those high-risk investments that were bound to fail due to the impending crash in order to get the payouts from their CDSs. They contributed to taking our financial system to near ruin, and then profited without any repercussions. We got ripped off when the government used taxpayer money, as well as money printing, to bailout these bad actors.    

When explained in simple terms, Credit Default Swaps prove to be much easier to comprehend than we would first think. The wealthy and powerful utilize jargon, to mention only one tactic, to make their crooked dealings seem above board and esoteric. “It’s too complicated for you, but not for us” is what they’re peddling. They knew they were rigging the system to the brink of ruin, but they just used jargon to deter you from questioning or challenging their authority.. 

CDSs are just one way bad actors ripped us off of trillions, and we failed to hold them accountable.