Who Will Solve Our Real Problem--The US is a Neofeudal Autocracy

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So who will solve our real problem: the centralization of wealth and power in a Neofeudal Autocracy?

My essay on America’s ten social classes was the appetizer to the main course: beneath the purposefully distracting PR of “democracy” and “free markets,” America is a Neofeudal Autocracy, i.e. a system in which real power, control and wealth are concentrated in the hands of the few at the top of a complex neofeudal arrangement of a secular nobility ruling the commoners with monopolistic powers cloaked in the sleight of hand of “democracy” and “free markets” serving up endless dollops of “Progress” and “prosperity.”

The Conflicts Brewing in America’s Ten Classes

The key to autocratic / totalitarian arrangements is the concentration of power via centralization of control / power. This centralization is not unique to governments; it works just as well in the private sector–the privatized totalitarianism of corporate monopolies and cartels–and in organizations ranging from religious orders to sports.

Centralization has positive and negative features. Centralizing control enables efficiencies and obedience–militaries and global corporations being examples–but it also enables a handful of self-serving incompetents to destabilize vast systems, and the straightforward replacement of the ruling elite with a new elite, as outlined in Edward Luttwak’s classic guide Coup d’Etat: A Practical Handbook (1968).

This makes autocratic / totalitarian arrangements tempting targets for overthrow, and fuels the paranoia and palace intrigues that come with highly centralized regimes. In other words, the stability of such structures is illusory.

Behind the happy-story narrative of “efficiencies,” the real purpose of autocratic / totalitarian arrangements is to eliminate transparency and accountability so those at the top and the insider-lackeys who serve them can maximize their private gains behind the moats and complexity thickets of centralized power.

The other way to replace autocratic / totalitarian arrangements is the citizenry concludes their interests are no longer being served by the bread and circuses the regime distributes to co-opt and distract the exploited commoners.

Alternatively, in repressive regimes that rely on coercion, the commoners must find sufficient common cause with other classes to rise up as a mass movement that overwhelms the regime’s coercive forces.

I summarize such social movements in this way: one by one, people decide that what was previously acceptable is no longer acceptable. That sounds simple, but it’s not.

My essay on America’s ten social classes sets the stage for a real problem-real solution discussion:

1. The real problem isn’t who’s currently holding the reins of power: the centralization of power is the core problem. Playing musical chairs–”democracy” swapping out who sits in which chair–won’t solve the real problem, which is centralization.

Call it “socialist” or “capitalist,” in either case you’re missing the point: the choice is between centralization of control and power (i.e. Neofeudal Autocracy) or the radical decentralization of control and power, which translates into the radical decentralization of ownership, capital and agency.

2. Spewing endless paeans to “free market capitalism” in a economy dominated by privatized totalitarian monopolies and cartels won’t solve the real problem–centralization of wealth and power–either. The wealth and power that’s supposedly held by commoners is counterfeit, illusory, phantom: the “wealth” is an illusory artifact of serial credit-asset bubbles fueled by a relentless expansion of credit “money” chasing tangible assets, not by increases in utility.

The “power” to replace Tweedledum with Tweedle-dummer won’t solve the real problem, which is the concentration of power and control, not who’s currently holding the levers of power.

The phrase golden handcuffs is bandied about to describe the servitude / loss of agency that is a trademark of neofeudal systems. In classic feudalism, the commoners are bound by law to the estates of the nobility. In neofeudalism, you can’t move because you have a 3% mortgage on your house you can’t afford to give up, and you can’t change careers because you can’t afford to lose the healthcare insurance provided by your current employer.

These aren’t golden handcuffs; they’re gold-painted leg-irons, chains whose ersatz “value” is an artifact of a corrupt, exploitive Neofeudal Autocracy. Control what’s affordable, what’s “necessary to get ahead” (credentials), healthcare and lower-cost credit, and voila, you no longer need the legal niceties of direct servitude: indirect servitude works even better because it fosters illusions of power, wealth and agency.

So who will solve our real problem: the centralization of wealth and power in a Neofeudal Autocracy? The only source of a solution is the mass of powerless commoners who currently buy into the notion that the system is still serving their interests, or they’re frozen by fear of losing what they have.

In other words, we’ll lose everything if the truth comes out. This perverse state of denial and fear is the trademark of neofeudalism, in which those who have already lost power and agency now cling to a corrupt, unstable Neofeudal Autocracy because a real solution–radical decentralization, transparency, accountability, competition, agency–would collapse the putrid credit-asset bubbles propping up the illusions of “Progress” and “prosperity.”

We’ve already lost everything of real value and can only regain them if the truth comes out. Each class has cut a deal with the devil, i.e. the Neofeudal Autocracy: I’ve got X-Y-Z–a low-interest-rate mortgage, healthcare insurance, some form of state-funded welfare, either subsidies for the rich or subsidies for the poor, or subsidies for everyone in between–and I have job security serving one fiefdom or another: either an extractive, venal corporation or an extractive, venal state.

One of the primary points of my essay was to highlight how each class lives in a completely different world than those above it. We’re accustomed to regional and cultural diversity in the US. Life in one place is quite different than life in another place.

But amidst this dizzying diversity, we share some common interests: air, water, soil and food that isn’t poisoned, a level playing field for every citizen, not of outcomes, but of opportunity, agency and freedom of movement, and a decentralized structure in which transparency and accountability cannot be extinguished to serve the interests of those at the top and their willing insider-lackeys.

Nothing will change until the various social classes find common cause in the most basic fundamentals: rather than fear that the truth will come out because we’ll lose everything if it does, we accept the hard truth that we’ve already lost everything of value by accepting the hidden servitude and obfuscation of Neofeudal Autocracy.

Rather than fear the truth, we must come around to realizing embracing the truth is our only real path to restoring what’s been lost to centralization and the concentration of wealth and power that comes with it.

Credit-asset bubbles concentrate wealth and power via concentrating capital which then buys political power. All this “wealth” is illusory. The power is real.

As for “AI will save us”–ahem… oops, AI is just another tool of our Neofeudal Autocracy:

NEW PODCASTS: Charles Hugh Smith on the Risks, Costs and Uses of AI (31:28 min)(host Richard Bonugli)

The Government Created an Ultra-Processed Economy–and It’s Destroying America (1:04 min)(host Daniel Horowitz)

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Source: http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2026/07/who-will-solve-our-real-problem-us-is.html