This is the second essay in the series on the “Initial Stress” phase, the first of four steps in the “ego maintenance” process that leads to fascism. The initial stress is the economic insult that promotes a sense of frustration among non-college educated working class voters. That initial stress is common to all non-college educated workers in the United States at this point in time. It is the combination of that stress, along with underlying authoritarian personality traits that makes an individual receptive to agitative and even fascist political messaging. Further analysis of the political and psyhological aspects of the political radicalization process will be provided in later essays in this series. The first essay on the Initial Stress briefly introduced the concept of “hostage markets”, which refers to how as more of a society’s wealth becomes concentrated in fewer hands, there is less incentive for large companies and the very wealthy to invest in innovative products or services, as the potential return on those investments becomes progressively limited by the diminishing amount of wealth in the hands of the majority of the population.

Another factor that contributes to diminishing wealth for the majority of the population in developed nations is the phenomenon of rotation of points of production and consumption, which is rotating production and sales between countries in a continuous search for lower production costs and increased sales. The most obvious example of this phenomenon is the out-sourcing of jobs to China, however, to focus all of one’s attention on one country is short-sighted.

Click here to read the rest of this essay at the Otter Globe & Intelligencer