Lobbyists, Profits and Decline: When the Economy Kills Humanity
Warning: this article pokes where it hurts. It is deliberately corrosive, sometimes caricatural, but always driven by a desire to ask the real questions.
Introduction:
Can we still talk about the economy without talking about corruption? Can we talk about growth without talking about destruction? This pamphlet is a cry, a satire, a mirror held up to a system that has turned against those it was supposed to serve.
1. Lobbying: Institutionalized Metastasis
Lobbying, in its polite definition, is an influencing activity. In its raw reality, it is a Trojan horse at the heart of our democracies. Armies of lobbyists roam the halls of parliaments, commissions, and ministries. Their mission? To ensure that laws do not serve the people, but their clients. Multinationals, finance giants, fossil industries, Big Pharma... the list is long.
They are not illegal. Worse: they are legitimate, recognized, accredited. As if the erosion of the common good had been normalized. Result: permitted pesticides, weakened regulations, evaded taxes... The economy is driven by those who profit the most, to the detriment of all others.
2. The Economy: System of Generalized Exploitation
We are taught that the economy is neutral, objective, almost natural. In truth, it is manufactured. And this architecture favors accumulation, competition, and infinite growth in a finite world.
When the economy dictates the law, ecosystems become 'resources', humans become 'human resources', solidarities become 'social charges'. Education is an 'investment', health a 'market', and the planet... a mere capital to exploit. GDP rises, the planet burns. We applaud.
Capitalism is not just an economic system. It is a mental software. It colonizes minds. It transforms citizens into clients, dreams into products, and needs into dependencies.
3. Towards a Social Chemotherapy?
Should we burn the economy? Or reinvent it? Some speak of degrowth, regenerative economy, post-capitalism. Others simply want to tax the richest and moralize capital. But can we really moralize a machine designed to crush everything that is not profitable?
Perhaps we first need to detoxify our language. Revisit our founding myths. Stop believing that the economy is the condition of life, when it is often the opposite.
Conclusion:
Lobbyists are the visible symptoms of a deeper cancer. An economy gone mad, with no purpose other than its own maintenance. But as long as we do not question its dogmas, as long as growth remains the dominant religion, healing will remain impossible.
And while some accumulate, others suffer. While the market 'self-regulates', the planet collapses.
Change will not come from those who profit from disorder. It may come from those who refuse, denounce, and resist.
