Pay, Slave or Die

The Question Nobody AsksHold your breath for a minute and experience that feeling of panic that hits you when an essential life-giving element is suddenly cut off. Now picture your income being stripped away without notice. Count the days until the next rent or mortgage payment, the next grocery bill, the next prescription.What humans have earned the authority to decide if other humans have access to what the earth provides every living being on the planet?Pay, slave or die: an ultimatum imposed through control of the means to live. Life has been placed behind a paywall. Submit your time and labor to the person who controls it. Refuse, and face the loss of food, shelter, or medical care.The demands have taken different forms—enslavement, tribute, inherited service, rent, debt, wages, and false criminal status. The suffering takes different forms, from homelessness to dehumanization, to a breaking of the spirit and mind. The ultimatum remains: surrender what is demanded, or lose access to the means to live, and your human dignity.This book follows the origins of this manufactured scheme, through to the lives of the people subjected to it—then asks how we end the threat that hangs over our lives.