They would rather see zero.

Dan, thank you for this question. It's really at the heart of the work that I'm trying to do now, which I call thanatocracy. So, it was John Locke who said political power is making laws punishable by death.

And I think anyone who's studied Marx or studied other political economists will see that the human surplus arises from reducing the value of the workers to zero, as close to slavery as you can get. So, that's the matter of value theory and political economy. But I think it rings true for most everybody that the boss is trying to reduce wages, the workers trying to increase them.

And the boss, unless he reaches some opposition, will go down to zero. You know, as long as labor is plentiful, as long as a new generation is created, or as long as immigration is possible, slavery is the tendency of capitalism. When I say slavery, I mean reducing the value of the human life to zero, to nothing.

From The Dig: Breaking the Machine w/ Peter Linebaugh, Feb 17, 2026 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dig/id1043245989?i=1000750229034&r=1662