I was playing Diablo 4 online with friends tonight, and had a thought:

The thing about all large-geography role-playing games is that you always get to talk to the people in charge.

This has always seemed very immersion-breaking for me. I mean, nobody gets to actually talk to the people who run our city, our state or our country (unless you’re vetted and you pay).

BUT - history has taught me there was a time when the White House had an open door for whomever happened by (as late as the mid-1800’s), when Presidents and Senators et al would have to physically travel town-to-town to engage with citizens of all kinds, and sway their vote by doing so. “Glad-handing” and kissing babies and such.

And yes, ‘duels’ could be declared by a peer against a peer, and a few times assassinations happened or went awry.

Take all this how you will.

What changed was the rise of the Corporation.

With the rise of the corporation (on the back of Fiat money, very important to note) was the rise of Departmentalization, of ‘Vertical’ structure, the rise of the wealthy intentionally recognizing and creating ‘worlds within the world’ in which nobody else could engage with them.

It’s as simple as hiring a Customer Service Dept to handle customer complaints.

Or “First Class” cum “Private Jets”.

Or “Vacation to Hawa’ii” became, idunno, where do the rich vacation now that you and I can’t go?

And it’s become as exceedingly as complex as a Deep State that is beyond Democratic, or even elected-official oversight, and which is now a global Organized Crime ring.

This ‘Virtualization’ - not the right word, but its what I have right now - this Virtualization of real human interaction underscores all of the problems we suffer right now in modern society.

People who can gain power no longer have to engage with the plebs.

People who can gain power no longer have to answer for their actions.

They’ve established a real-world industry of Customer Service to separate them from having to have real lives, with real consequences.

They now live in a world apart.

And therefore, they see the rest of us, as a world apart from them.

It wasn’t always this way, not but by a few generations.

It was the rise of the Corporations on the back of Fiat money that rug-pulled our Leaders’ Humanity out from under them, and allowed the tiny number of actual Sociopath/Psychopaths that exist in human society to flood into the halls of Rulership.

In the past, 1 maybe 2 Sociopath/Psychopaths could gain power, at great cost.

Now, they seek refuge from their shame by flooding into the major Institutions of Central Planning across the globe.