In both economic and political systems, it is undeniable that the actual microcosmic individuals constitute the said systems. Yet in both systems, there is a tendency to stray from focusing on the individual to focusing on the overall health/robustness of the systems as a whole. This focus on the whole mostly pertains to ensuring that the systems’ many functions are well partitions and that individuals are subservient to the functionalities and purposes of the various components of the systems.
Proverbially speaking, individuals become cogs in the machine, having their degrees of freedoms often restricted so that choices/actions/communications of the individual do not violate/infringe upon the (sometimes status quo) structural integrity of the systems.
In my general opinion, often though not always, the system is usually on the path toward total domination over the individual. Though sometimes, episodically, individuals revolt, tearing down the system to gain some grounds, like tide being pulled back by gravity, ceding waters making room for land formerly submerged by the waves…
But does the system eventually completely takeover? I think that is also impossible. For the survival of the system is vitally dependent on the willing participation of the individuals. When the restrictions of a given system become unbearable for virtually all system participants, the system must collapse. It will collapse.
What system are we in now? At what stage are we in that system?
I think modern humans are in an age of globalized economic system mostly propelled by 3 forces of 1) industrial-technological; 2) Socio-Religious; 3) Geopolitical (currently dictated by fluid power dynamics among US/EU/CN/RU).
All 3 forces contains multi-prong sub-components that need to be unpacked in order to provide a reasonable examination of such forces and the globalized economic system, and most important how/where individuals fit in that system, and where we are headed in that system.
So here we go…
