And Why That Was Never an Accident
It’s easy to assume that if something isn’t treated as a right, it must be because making it universal is impossible.
Healthcare is “too expensive.”
Housing is “too complex.”
Food and water must be “managed by markets.”
But that explanation falls apart the moment you notice something obvious:
The people who govern us already have these needs guaranteed.
Monarchs, heads of state, and high-level government officials do not worry about medical bills, food access, clean water, or housing security. Their well-being is covered—quietly, reliably—by the public. By the collective value created by the people living under those systems.
Which raises a simple question:
If universal care is possible for a few, why is it framed as unrealistic for everyone else?
Scarcity Was Designed, Not Discovered
Human beings lived for millennia without monetizing survival.
Food was grown near where people lived.
Water was gathered locally.
Shelter was built communally.
None of this was idyllic or easy—but access to survival wasn’t mediated primarily by money.
That changed as land was enclosed, ownership centralized, and survival needs were folded into economic systems designed for accumulation. Cities were reshaped to consume rather than produce. Food systems were industrialized and concentrated onto privately owned land. Water became infrastructure. Housing became an asset class.
Scarcity didn’t emerge because the planet ran out.
It emerged because access was reorganized.
When Survival Becomes a Commodity
Once necessities are commodified, a few things happen quickly:
- Access becomes conditional.
- Price replaces need as the organizing principle.
- Profit determines distribution.
At that point, “universal” becomes a threat.
If healthcare were guaranteed, medical debt would lose its leverage.
If housing were treated as a human need, speculation would shrink.
If food and water were commons, hoarding would lose its power.
So these things are framed as luxuries—even though life depends on them.
Why You Can’t Just “Live Off the Land”
Many people sense something is wrong here and ask a reasonable question:
Why can’t I simply provide for myself?
In many places, you can’t legally collect rainwater without permits. Growing food is restricted by zoning laws. Urban landscapes are designed to prohibit self-sufficiency, not encourage it.
This isn’t because individuals can’t be trusted.
It’s because dependence stabilizes systems.
When people must participate in markets to survive, participation becomes mandatory. Choice becomes narrow. Compliance becomes rational.
Freedom shrinks quietly—not through force, but through design.
The Quiet Double Standard
Consider the contrast:
For the public:
- Healthcare is tied to employment or debt.
- Housing is precarious.
- Food access is conditional.
- Water is billed, regulated, or privatized.
For those at the top:
- Healthcare is comprehensive and guaranteed.
- Housing is secured.
- Food and water access are unquestioned.
- Security is publicly funded.
This isn’t oversight.
It’s hierarchy.
The system functions on the assumption that some lives must remain precarious so others can remain protected.
“That’s Just How It Works”
This is the phrase that keeps the structure intact.
It suggests inevitability.
It discourages imagination.
It frames questioning as naïveté.
But systems are not laws of nature.
They are agreements—maintained through participation, enforcement, and belief.
And belief is shaped by culture.
The normalization of scarcity, the moralization of need, and the distraction from structural design are all part of a broader pattern in culture and collective psychology—how shared narratives make unequal systems feel natural and unchangeable. These dynamics are explored more deeply in why the world feels so loud (https://dualisticunity.com/why-the-world-feels-so-loud/).
Who This Arrangement Serves
Treating necessities as commodities:
- keeps labor cheap,
- keeps people anxious,
- keeps attention fragmented,
- and keeps wealth concentrated.
A population managing constant survival pressure has less capacity to question the rules that created the pressure.
This isn’t cruelty for its own sake.
It’s efficiency for accumulation.
Remembering What Was Covered Over
The point isn’t to romanticize the past or deny complexity.
It’s to remember that:
- access was once local,
- care was once relational,
- survival wasn’t always monetized.
Those roots weren’t erased.
They were buried.
And buried things can still grow when conditions change.
A Different Question to Hold
Instead of asking:
“How could we ever afford universal care?”
Try asking:
“Who decided that life itself should be conditional?”
That question doesn’t demand instant solutions.
It invites clarity.
And clarity is the beginning of change—not because it guarantees outcomes, but because it dissolves the illusion of inevitability.
Closing Invitation
This reflection is part of an ongoing exploration into how power, identity, and collective participation shape the systems we live inside.
These themes are explored more deeply in Proof That You’re God, a book about awareness, responsibility, and the freedom that comes from seeing clearly rather than accepting inherited limits as natural law.
You don’t need to reject society to see it clearly.
But seeing it clearly may change what you’re willing to normalize.
Reflection
Where in your life have necessities been framed as privileges—and what shifts when you notice who receives them unconditionally, and who does not?
