I very much appreciate your reporting on this issue, as you must well know. However, I cannot agree with one conclusion you have arrived at, despite that I do agree that we are all very profoundly psychologically manipulated.
"There will be no revolution in the West whatsoever."
I know there will be. I am very revolting. Ask any of my exes, and they'll tell you how revolting I am.
But, srsly, people are innately social. Our overlords have centuries of research and clever tricks they've learned to take advantage of this profitably, as you are aware. But there is a boundary beyond which people are scared straight, as it were, where cognitive dissonance is confronted and sometimes overcome. Perhaps all of us aren't capable of it, but some of us will.
More importantly, technology today creates a massive productivity benefit to adopting decentralized means of production. Making our own goods and services does not enable our overlords to extract profit, nor does it create taxable events. Taxes alone reduce productivity ~50%. As people begin to grasp that they are losing wealth by buying products instead of making their own, and as 3D printers, aquaponics, and DIY solar panels continue to improve, to become as easy to use as cell phones, more and more of us will use them, and keep the wealth we create from parasitic overlords. That's not a revolution, it's evolution. Centralization cannot economically compete with decentralization, and it's only a matter of time before we cure our infestation with parasites.
Thanks!
I wrote this text hoping that I was wrong, @valued-customer…