Pay, Slave or Die

Hold your breath for a moment and experience that feeling of panic that hits you when an essential life-giving element is suddenly cut off. Now picture your income stopping. Count the days until the next rent payment, the next grocery bill, the next prescription. Food is still being grown and delivered to other people, yet your access has been cut. Who acquired the authority to decide whether you may share in what the Earth provides every living thing 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 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, and the wage. The suffering takes different forms. The ultimatum remains: surrender what is demanded, or lose access to the means to live. This book follows those forms through the lives of the people subjected to them, then asks how we end the threat that hangs over our lives.