Resistance of those without resources against those with amassed resources. We can call them rich vs. poor, leaders vs. followers, advantaged vs. disadvantaged. the advantaged groups tend to be characteristically small, the disadvantaged large. [...] Restlessness is useless when it is condensed and exploited to empower those chaining them. For example, rebellion is an easily bought commercial product, a socially/tribally recognized garb you can wear. You'd be hard-pressed more to look the part of a revolutionary than to actually do anything that could potentially defy the oppressive regime you might be a part of. There are other examples, which leads me to my next point. [...] It would be in the best interest for leaders to optimize for a situation where rebellion cannot ever arise, that is the single threat any self-interested leader with the goal of continuing their reign needs to worry about. Whether it involves mass surveillance, economic manipulation, or simply despotic control is largely irrelevant, the idea behind them is what counts. Now when you bring up the subject of technology, any smart leader with a stake in their reign time will immediately seize any opportunity to extend it. Set a situation up to create technology that necessarily mitigates the potential for rebellion to arise, and you get to rule longer. This is a theoretical scenario. It is a scary one, and the prevalence of conspiracy theories arising from such a theory simply plays to biases founded in fear. And of course, with bias comes the inevitable rationalist backlash to such idea. But I'm not interested in this political discourse, I just want to highlight something. The scenario establishes an optimization process. Optimization for control. It is always more advantageous for a leader to worry more about their reign and extend it than to be benevolent, a sort of tragedy of the commons for leaders. The natural in-system solution for this optimization problem is to eliminate all potent