Manufactured Precarity

Manufactured Precarity enables systematic extraction

Judith Butler's distinction between universal human vulnerability (precariousness) and politically produced vulnerability (precarity) illuminates how instability becomes a tool of control.¹ Research demonstrates that narcissistic abusers systematically create financial dependence, social isolation, and emotional instability to maintain dominance.² At the systemic level, identical patterns emerge through what scholars term "precarity capitalism"—the deliberate dismantling of stability to ensure compliance.³

Economic research by Maurizio Lazzarato reveals how debt functions as a control mechanism, creating what he calls "the indebted subject"—permanently subordinated through "infinite and unpayable" obligations.⁴ David Graeber's historical analysis shows how debt relationships create power asymmetries that mirror abusive dynamics exactly.⁵

Whether an abuser creates financial dependence or capitalism creates structural unemployment, the mechanism is identical: manufacturing instability that forces victims to accept exploitation as the price of survival.

Studies document how the shift from secure employment to the "gig economy" represents systemic trauma bonding—creating just enough unpredictability to maintain hope while ensuring permanent insecurity.⁶ The neurobiological research on "intermittent reinforcement" shows this pattern creates the strongest behavioral conditioning, whether deployed by an individual abuser or an economic system.⁷

The Manufacture of Extractable Precarity

Guy Standing's analysis of the precariat reveals capitalism's deliberate creation of vulnerability. Post-1980s neoliberalism systematically produced a new class characterized by unstable labor, loss of occupational identity, and chronic insecurity. Through casualization, zero-hour contracts, and the gig economy, workers must perform extensive unpaid "work-for-labor" - constantly seeking work, remaining on call, maintaining employability.⁸  Standing emphasizes this isn't accidental: "Global capital and the state serving its interests want a large precariat."⁹

Debt functions as governmentality - a mechanism of control that disciplines subjects temporally by colonizing their futures. Research shows debt creates malleability (indebted populations accept worse conditions), operates through false hope (marketed as enabling dreams while creating dependency), generates traumatic stress (unpredictability creates psychological domination), and shows gendered and racialized disparities (targeting those already vulnerable).¹⁰

Housing insecurity creates profound neurobiological impacts - chronic stress activation, intergenerational trauma transmission, nervous system dysregulation leading to disease, and racialized disparities (44% higher rates for Black Americans).¹¹ Like narcissistic abusers who destabilize their victims' material security to maintain control, systems create precarity as a technology of extraction.¹²

Healthcare commodification perfects this vulnerability manufacturing by making survival contingent on exploitation - health access depends on employment compliance, medical debt creates further extraction pathways, impossible choices between health and necessities justify any working conditions. 

The Master's House first creates the wound, then profits from selling single use bandages.

References:

1. https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/precarity
2. https://www.indigenousgoddessgang.com/heart-medicine/2019/1/10/an-antidote-to-narcissistic-abuse
3. https://www.postneoliberalism.org/articles/precarity-for-all/
4. https://www.theoryculturesociety.org/blog/review-maurizio-lazzarato-governing-by-debt
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5,000_Years
6. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/sheldon-wolin-and-inverted-totalitarianism/
7. https://www.indigenousgoddessgang.com/heart-medicine/2019/1/10/an-antidote-to-narcissistic-abuse
8. https://greattransition.org/publication/precariat-transformative-class
9. https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/23/10/2023/insecurity-feature-not-bug-capitalism-it-can-spark-resistance
10. https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/focaal/2020/87/fcl870104.xml
11. https://healthpolicy.ucla.edu/newsroom/blog/housing-insecurity-psychological-distress
12. https://www.ajmc.com/view/your-home-your-health-the-hidden-costs-of-housing-insecurity