Every political economy, no matter its self-image or stated goals, relies on the same underlying mechanics: extraction, distribution, control, legitimation, and feedback. These are not policy preferences or ideological signatures—they are structural invariants. Whether in early imperial systems or today’s data-driven economies, these components reappear in form after form. What differs is how they’re masked, resisted, or absorbed.
Extraction is foundational. Systems persist by removing value—labor, energy, time, attention—from one location or group and consolidating it elsewhere. Under British colonialism, raw materials flowed from colonies to industrial centers. Under contemporary capitalism, value is extracted not just from labor but from behavioral patterns. The case of lithium mining in Chile’s Salar de Atacama illustrates this clearly: water-intensive extraction for batteries used in global markets has undermined local ecosystems and indigenous livelihoods. The rhetoric is sustainability; the structure is resource strip-mining by another name. The mechanism did not evolve ethically—it migrated technologically.
Distribution determines where that extracted value goes. This is often presented as market efficiency or central planning, but in practice, it follows pre-existing power contours. After the 2008 global financial crisis, vast public resources were mobilized to stabilize failing private institutions. The U.S. government directed over $700 billion through the TARP program, largely to banks whose risk exposure had endangered the economy. Direct relief to individuals came later, and in far smaller proportion. This was not a failure of policy—it was an accurate expression of the system’s internal logic: to preserve continuity for capital first, and for people second.
Control maintains operational coherence. In ancient regimes, this was direct coercion—military, judicial, or religious. Today, control is more often embedded in platforms and systems. Consider the design of the gig economy: workers are nominally independent, yet governed by algorithmic instructions, opaque penalties, and economic pressure points. You are not told what to do, but the environment is tuned such that only one decision appears rational. This is coercion without commands—contingency engineered to look like freedom. The structure shapes action without visibly issuing orders.
Legitimation justifies the structure. It answers the question: why is this system acceptable? In the U.S., the myth of meritocracy plays this role—those who succeed are presumed deserving, while those who fail are presumed lacking. This narrative persists even in the face of structural inequality. Tech companies, for example, often position themselves as engines of progress. Uber argued it was “democratizing” mobility while actively undermining labor protections. Legitimating narratives do not need to be consistent—they need only to be sufficiently plausible to avoid destabilizing scrutiny. The goal is not to convince everyone, but to neutralize resistance by framing the system as natural or inevitable.
Feedback is the system’s response to its own stress. Not every signal leads to reform. Some are suppressed, co-opted, or reframed. In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission created a mechanism to acknowledge past violence without dismantling existing structures of inequality. Contrast that with the U.S. response to the 2003 Iraq War protests. Despite millions mobilizing globally, the war proceeded uninterrupted. Feedback was acknowledged but not incorporated. In resilient systems, feedback loops can stabilize the system; in brittle ones, they are ignored until fracture. Whether reform follows depends less on justice than on whether adaptation is necessary to preserve continuity.
These five components—extraction, distribution, control, legitimation, feedback—form the base layer of political economy. To recognize them is to gain leverage over how systems produce continuity. When unexamined, they feel like reality. When seen clearly, they become options. The challenge is not just to describe the world more accurately, but to generate interventions at the level where structure becomes habit—where repetition disguises itself as necessity. The tools of critique, when properly aimed, are not aimed at opinions. They’re aimed at the seams.
Daedelus Kite 