The Failed Institutionalized Manipulation
One of the most stubborn and destructive illusions of modern history is the belief that the current global economic system equates to the “free market.” This illusion is not a single error, but the cornerstone of an entire worldview upon which generations have been built without ever questioning it. Power has taught us that capitalism is based on the natural, organic balance of supply and demand, where the consumer is king, shaping the world with their own rational decisions. This image has been repeated by textbooks, economic models, and political speeches for decades, until it solidified into a self-evident truth—though in reality, it is merely a carefully constructed narrative.
But reality is much darker. What we call capitalism today is actually an asymmetrical dictatorship. It is an artificially maintained, self-sustaining matrix that long ago ceased to satisfy genuine human needs, and instead holds society captive through psychological manipulation and the industrial-scale production of anxiety. The system does not produce to make life better—it shatters the collective psyche in order to keep producing. This paradox is the deepest, least discussed truth of the modern economy: the more it satisfied genuine needs, the sooner it would reach the limits of its own growth, hence it is forced to constantly create new, artificial needs. The primary victim of this false capitalism is the being who has been stripped of their sovereign human nature and reduced to a single mechanical function: they have become a consumer.
From Need to Artificial Desire
Classical capitalism collapsed and became false the moment industry became capable of producing more goods than society actually needed for biological survival or maintenance. This turning point did not occur on a single day, but through a long process, as mass production, transportation networks, and marketing tools gradually outgrew the point where they still served the logic of real supply. On a finite planet, infinite economic growth is mathematically impossible—unless the system is reprogrammed from satisfying needs to generating a sense of lack and trauma. This reprogramming was not the result of a single engineering decision, but a slow, almost imperceptible cultural transformation that gradually rewrote what people considered a “good life.”
For the machine not to stop, people must be kept in a constant state of dissatisfaction. The basic formula of false capitalism is the following: convince the individual that they are not good enough, not free enough, not successful enough, and then sell them the product as the only possible cure for the artificially inflicted wound. This formula has been embedded so subtly and so deeply into everyday culture that today it is almost imperceptible: advertisements, social media, and often even the language of personal development repeat this same pattern—first it creates a sense of lack, then it offers a product or service to fill it.
Hacking the Psyche: The “Torches of Freedom”
The perfect, historical origin of this institutionalized manipulation dates back to the 1920s. This was when Edward Bernays entered the stage—Sigmund Freud’s nephew, who is considered today as the father of modern propaganda and Public Relations (PR). Bernays’ work is particularly significant because he openly and consciously applied his uncle’s psychoanalytic insights to influence the masses—his undisguised, proudly embraced goal was to harness unconscious human desires for economic and political purposes.
In 1929, the tobacco industry was struggling with a huge “market problem”: due to existing social taboos, women did not smoke, leaving half of the potential consumer market untapped. Bernays did not start advertising the taste, quality, or price of cigarettes—he understood the dark essence of false capitalism. He recognized that the product had to be chained to a deep, subconscious human desire. At that time, women were fighting for their equality and independence against social oppression, and this genuine, legitimate social movement provided the raw material that Bernays used with ruthless precision for a completely different purpose.
Bernays hired a group of young, attractive women to light up simultaneously at a carefully staged moment, in the crosshairs of cameras, at the New York Easter parade. He planned the scene down to the minute, notified the press in advance, and ensured that the photographs would make the front pages of the country’s leading newspapers the next day. He then told the press: these women were not smoking cigarettes—they were holding up the “Torches of Freedom.”
The manipulation was brilliant and demonic. Bernays linked a harmful, biologically addictive, toxic industrial product to the purest human desire for freedom, rebellion, and emancipation. From that moment on, women were not buying tobacco—they were buying independence. This moment became one of the turning points in marketing history because it proved: a product does not need to be sold for itself; it is enough to make it part of a much larger, much deeper human story.
The Scale of Profit: A Civilizational Black Hole
The result of this psychological hacking was not merely a successful advertising campaign, but the creation of a financial monster that has been consuming the planet’s energy ever since. Tobacco industry revenues skyrocketed, and the model proved a terrifying truth: if you manipulate human consciousness, profit becomes limitless. This realization did not remain the exclusive property of the tobacco industry thereafter—over the following decades, almost every major industry adopted and refined the same logic, from cosmetics to fashion, from the food industry to the tech sector.
To grasp the historical scale of this parasitic operation: by the 21st century, the global tobacco industry’s annual revenue approached $1 trillion.
This number is unfathomable. It exceeds the total annual GDP of developed nations like Switzerland or Saudi Arabia. This capital is several times the amount that the UN estimates would be needed to completely eradicate extreme poverty and global hunger. If we place these two numbers side by side, the contrast is shocking in itself: while we have been debating for decades where to find the resources to solve the world’s most pressing problems, a single, inherently harmful industry moves an even larger amount year after year, completely undisturbed.
Let us pause for a moment and consider the absurdity of this: the population of the planet hands over an amount equivalent to the economic power of an entire developed nation—one trillion dollars year after year—to an industry that does not produce a single molecule of nourishing, protective, or forward-looking value. It contributes nothing to civilization, only cellular-level addiction, disease, and death. Thus, the system extracts the entire economic power of a country like Switzerland from society to maintain an artificially generated trauma and its toxic “cure.” This mechanism shows in its pure form how a strictly psychological construct—a sense of lack and addiction—can become a real, rock-solid economic force that rivals centuries-old national economies.
The Tabula Rasa: Reclaiming Humanity
The model created by Bernays became the DNA of today’s economy. That was when it was decided that the economy is no longer about functionality. Cars became status symbols, cosmetics became the antidote to the terror of aging, and technological devices became shields against social exclusion. Power learned how to tap into the deepest energies of the human psyche in order to sacrifice them on the altar of profit. This process was further refined from generation to generation, with increasingly sophisticated tools—from data analytics to behavioral science—until it became almost impossible to distinguish genuine need from artificially implanted desire.
The “Great Giving Back” movement and the Tabula Rasa put an end to this entropic, sick cycle. We declare the universal truth: the industrial-scale manipulation of human attention, desire, and fear is not a business strategy, but a crime against collective consciousness. This realization does not aim at a partial repair of the system, but at its fundamental rethinking—pointing toward a future where economic activity once again serves genuine human well-being, rather than undermining it.
The era of false capitalism is over. We are tearing humanity out of the humiliating role of the “consumer,” and by building a transparent system based on real values, we restore to them the status that power has stolen: the dignity of a conscious, free being who directs their own destiny.
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