SYSTEMS · POWER · CRITICAL THINKING
Everyone Is Blaming the System. I Think We’re Missing the Pattern.
Changing structures matters. But without examining the people, values and mechanisms within them, familiar dynamics can return under a different name.
In this article
In another article, I wrote about something that should sound absurd when said out loud: looking for work costs money.
Increasingly, even access to the job market sits behind a paywall.
Pay to be seen. Pay to contact people. Pay to access opportunities. Pay to automate applications. Pay to improve your chances of finding the job you need precisely because you need money.
It is the monetisation of people’s fear, need and desperation. Nothing particularly new, really.
Many people responding to that argument called it “late-stage capitalism”.
Maybe. But I think we need to go some layers deeper.
If we stop at the label, we risk missing the pattern.
Systems don’t exist without people
Capitalism, socialism, communism. Public, private. Progressive, conservative, libertarian. We can argue endlessly about systems, ideologies and political identities.
But systems do not design themselves.
Institutions are made of people. Governments are made of people. Companies are made of people. Markets emerge from human decisions and interactions. Rules are written by people, enforced by people, circumvented by people and rewritten by people.
Changing a structure can change incentives, opportunities and constraints. Of course it can.
But if we change the system without examining the values of the people designing, governing and operating it, the same power dynamics can simply reappear under a different name.
“Change the system without changing the underlying values, and the same power dynamics can simply reappear under a different name.”
This is why I am more interested in patterns than camps.
Look at the mechanism
When a problem appears and someone offers a solution, I think there are some useful questions to ask.
Who benefits?
Who pays the price?
Who holds the power?
Who controls the resources?
Does the proposed solution actually solve the problem?
Does somebody benefit from the problem continuing to exist?
Does the solution create another problem and restart the cycle?
And perhaps the most important question:
What are you being asked to give up in exchange for the solution?
Money? Privacy? Data? Autonomy? Freedom? Dignity? Responsibility? Decision-making power?
Sometimes a problem is created. Sometimes it already exists and somebody simply discovers that fear, scarcity or vulnerability can be monetised or exploited.
Sometimes the proposed solution genuinely works.
The point is learning to tell the difference.
The current job-search market offers a useful example. A genuine problem exists: finding work is difficult. A growing industry then sells visibility, automation, access and optimisation to the people experiencing that difficulty. Meanwhile, Texas is now investigating allegations concerning LinkedIn, paid Premium subscriptions and fake or misleading job opportunities.
That investigation does not prove wrongdoing. It does, however, make the underlying question harder to dismiss: what happens when the organisation selling access to a solution also benefits economically from the persistence of the problem?
Then turn the questions around
There is another part of critical thinking that is considerably less comfortable.
Apply the same scrutiny to yourself.
Before demanding that somebody fund an idea, ask: where will the resources come from?
Before supporting a policy because its intended outcome sounds desirable, ask: what are its likely second- and third-order consequences?
Before deciding that something should exist, ask what it requires to exist. Who builds it? Who maintains it? Who pays for it? Are the necessary resources actually available?
Before making a choice, ask what consequences it may have for you, for other people, for society and for the environment, immediately and years from now.
And when something confirms everything you already believe, perhaps that is precisely when it deserves the most scrutiny.
“Critical thinking becomes rather convenient if we use it exclusively to analyse other people’s contradictions.”
The ego can wear any uniform
When I use the word ego here, I do not mean selfishness or arrogance.
I mean identification: the need to be the good one, the victim, the saviour, the authority, the person who is right and virtuous.
This is why opposing camps can reproduce remarkably similar dynamics while remaining convinced that only the other side is doing it.
The Karpman Drama Triangle offers one useful lens: Victim, Rescuer, Persecutor. People and institutions can move between those roles while preserving the same underlying relationship with power.
We can replace one system with another, buy the next solution, adopt the next ideology and choose the next side.
Without recognising the mechanism, we may eventually recreate the same problem in different clothes.
Even apparently reassuring narratives deserve examination. “Employment is rising”, for example, may be statistically correct while still leaving unanswered questions about wages, contracts, sectors, age groups and inactivity.
False dichotomies keep us busy asking which camp is right.
I am becoming less interested in that question.
I would rather ask:
What pattern keeps producing the same outcome?
And then the considerably more uncomfortable question:
Where am I reproducing it myself?
Those questions, to me, are far more useful.
Look beyond labels and examine the pattern
Explore my work on systems, communication and change, or contact me to continue the conversation.
