What is the empire?

Briefly, the empire is a label for the collective activities of certain humans to systematically redistribute power inequitably. Empires concentrate power or influence, as well as access to affluence. They attempt to govern the attention of targeted populations, as well as the interpretations and behavioral responses of those targets.

They promote or encourage or reward certain behaviors. They discourage or penalize other behaviors, such as crimes and taxable activities (which result in a fee or fine being owed to them by someone).

Many branches of the empire operate as official governments. They regulate crimes like extortion, murder, and fraud. By regulate, I mean that they attempt to first ritualize or systematize those activities, and then second to monopolize those activities by discouraging others from that kind of conduct in a variety of ways.

However, official governments often operate in association with foreign sponsors that may be "silent partners" with no official connection to a publicized government. In the 1950s, the military dictator of Cuba (Batista), was supported and protected by sponsors in the US within what is generally known as the mafia. While an official government may publicize acting in opposition to all criminals, some criminals may be diverting wealth to the government in order to maintain exclusive control of protected business operations, such as illegal gambling, brothels, and drug trafficking. Criminals who are not part of the favored network will typically be targeted and penalized by the ruling criminals as well as by the government agents of those ruling criminals. In fact, governments may sponsor programs to encourage criminal activity in order to use the criminal activity as a justification for government programs of coercion.

In the US, as in other places, criminal activities have consistently been protected by the use of Presidential pardons. Those fully-legal pardons can be issued to protect people from criminal penalties which would otherwise be pursued against them. Some examples of criminal suspects or convicted criminals who have been pardoned include the people indicted in the 1860s as accomplices in the assassination of President Lincoln or certain government officials indicted in the 1980s for the illegal smuggling of weapons, narcotics, and/or information, such as Lt. Col. Oliver North or Secretary of State Caspar Weinberger.



In short, governments regulate behavior. They govern people. They rule the masses.

In particular, they influence public perceptions and public demand for various products and services. They may offer special protections in some industries, but only for certain businesses. They may broadly subsidize some industries (diverting wealth from all other industries).

Most industries, they penalize with taxes, tariffs, and costly regulations. Further, they criminalize certain businesses, assuring maximum profit for any operations that have the unofficial favoritism of the leaders within a government, such as when "the government is deep undercover in their investigation of a criminal operation and so we must not jeopardize the undercover agent's access to information by prosecuting crimes too early... without the approval of the top-level supervisors of the secret undercover program."



Do governments want to eradicate crime? Why would they? That would be like a health care professional not only curing one patient but preventing illness in the entire population. Eradication of a threat can be bad for business, especially when the enduring presence of that threat is essential for business.

Governments assist in the rapid redistribution of wealth and power. Governments manipulate public perceptions, public demand, and public behavior in order to favor certain markets over others. In other words, governments may create policies to control prices (up or down or even both up and down in alternation).

It can be useful to observe at least the simplest and most influential ways that governments systematically influence public perception and manipulate the public's willingness to pay a particular price for a particular purchase. In the next section, on the sacred objects of the empire, we will explore how governments are able to take items that are virtually worthless and convince the public to exchange things of direct practical valuable for things that have almost no value outside of the empire.

Next: What are the sacred objects of the empire?

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