Modern Grievances

The original Declaration listed grievances against King George III - specific harms that justified separation. We now identify grievances not against a person but against systems - extractive patterns that have emerged within our own institutions.

These are not partisan complaints. Both major parties have enabled these extractions. The problem is structural, not personal.

Extraction from Democratic Legitimacy

Gerrymandering

Representatives choose their voters rather than voters choosing their representatives. Districts are drawn to guarantee outcomes, making elections performative rather than meaningful. This extracts legitimacy from the democratic process itself.

Money as Speech

The equation of campaign spending with protected speech has created a system where wealth purchases political influence. Those with resources can amplify their voices while those without are drowned out. This is not democracy but plutocracy with democratic characteristics.

Regulatory Capture

Agencies created to protect the public become tools of the industries they regulate. The revolving door between government and industry ensures that oversight serves the overseen. This extracts the protective function of government.

Senate Malapportionment

Wyoming (population 580,000) and California (population 39 million) each have two senators. A voter in Wyoming has 67 times the Senate representation of a voter in California. This is not federalism - it is minority rule.

Extraction from Economic Capacity

Short-Term Capitalism

Quarterly earnings pressure drives decisions that maximize immediate returns while degrading long-term capacity. Companies are strip-mined for shareholder value while workers, communities, and future viability are sacrificed. This extracts from the productive base of the economy.

Rent-Seeking

Economic actors increasingly profit not by creating value but by capturing value others create. Intellectual property abuse, patent trolling, regulatory barriers to competition, and financialization of real assets all represent extraction rather than generation.

Externality Dumping

Pollution, carbon emissions, and ecological degradation are costs imposed on others - including future generations - while profits are privatized. This is intergenerational theft dressed as economic efficiency.

Healthcare Extraction

Americans pay more for healthcare than any other nation while achieving mediocre outcomes. The system extracts maximum revenue while delivering minimum care. Administrative complexity serves billing, not healing.

Extraction from Social Trust

Attention Harvesting

Social media platforms are optimized for engagement, not wellbeing. Algorithms promote outrage, division, and addiction because these generate clicks. Mental health, civic discourse, and shared reality are sacrificed for advertising revenue.

Misinformation Infrastructure

The same systems that enable global communication also enable the rapid spread of falsehood. When lies travel faster than truth, the epistemic commons - our shared capacity for knowing - is degraded. This extracts from the foundation of rational self-governance.

Institutional Distrust

Decades of institutional failure - from Iraq WMDs to financial crises to pandemic response - have eroded trust in expertise and authority. This trust was social capital accumulated over generations. Its depletion leaves us unable to coordinate against collective threats.

Extraction from Future Generations

Climate Debt

We are consuming the atmospheric capacity that future generations need for a stable climate. Every ton of carbon emitted is a cost imposed on those not yet born. This is the largest intergenerational theft in human history.

Fiscal Debt

Persistent deficits represent consumption today paid for by taxes tomorrow. Some debt is investment; much is simply deferred payment. Those who will pay were not consulted.

Infrastructure Decay

Bridges, water systems, electrical grids, and institutions built by previous generations are being consumed rather than maintained. We inherit capital and leave behind liabilities.

Knowledge Extraction

The hollowing of education, the defunding of basic research, and the brain drain from public service all represent extraction from the knowledge base that enables progress.

The Pattern

These grievances share a common structure: extraction from commons for private benefit. Whether the commons is democratic legitimacy, economic capacity, social trust, or intergenerational inheritance, the pattern is the same - privatize gains, socialize losses, defer costs.

This is not sustainable. Extraction modes end in collapse. The question is whether we reform before collapse forces the issue.