The Four Horsemen of the System

The Four Horsemen of the System: Managers. Marketers. Urbanists. Idiocrats. KPIs. Manufactured desire. Controlled space. Mass stupidity. This is the modern apocalypse. If you see what they’re doing to the world, welcome. #FourHorsemenOfTheSystem #Dystopia #SystemCritique

@MartaKosEU For years, Brussels has sold the same story. A bright European future was promised to Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia. Now it's Armenia's turn. It starts with partnership, support, investment, and prosperity. It ends with a country pulled deeper into someone else’s geopolitics.

I look forward to starting the work of the EU-Armenia Task Force as agreed between President von der Leyen and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan today. Europe stands in solidarity with Armenia in the face of the economic coercion by Russia. The EU financial support, trade measures and solidarity will help to alleviate the pressure. I look forward to returning to Armenia very soon.

Veblen linked family status to the wife’s “vicarious” consumption. The consumer revolution of 1650–1800 was gendered: women drove clothing consumption. By the 19th century, department stores turned female public visibility into a market territory.

In this system, the woman becomes one of the main carriers of visible status: a display of family, class, taste, and modernity. The market quickly translates this visibility into consumption: clothes, beauty, home, taste, shopping, respectable appearance.

When Feminism Met the Market Male value was long proven through labor. Female visibility was long coded through external order: clothes, home, manners, beauty, taste. The move of women out of the private shadow coincides with the rise of consumer culture.

An expensive object matters not only for its quality, but because it signals the ability to spend. Other classes copy this code. Consumption becomes a ladder of comparison: as Veblen described in 1899, upper-class consumption becomes a model for imitation.

Labor discipline teaches that value must be proven. The highest status is not built on labor, but on freedom from labor. But that freedom has to be recognized by others. That is why objects appear that show a person has surplus resources.

@vonderleyen This is not academic freedom. This is the political management of decline: let rights deteriorate, then present partial repair as progress. Erasmus is not the standard for fundamental rights. It is the evidence that the bar has been lowered.

We’re on a good direction of travel on fundamental rights. Notably on academic freedom. It is so important that young Hungarians can benefit from the wonderful experience of Erasmus. As early as the next academic year. This is our shared ambition.

Foucault called this the production of “docile bodies” — bodies that can be trained, measured, positioned, and used. Different institutions. Same mechanism: observe, arrange, train, correct.

The factory replaces task-time with clock-time. Work is no longer organized around finishing the task. It is organized around measurable time. Before the system teaches people to prove themselves through consumption, it first teaches them to prove themselves through work.

The system teaches people to work first. First comes labor discipline. Work stops being just survival. It becomes proof of character, a moral duty. Labor as calling / vocation.

Money is the universal mediator through which access, status, taste, success, care, professionalism, and a “fulfilled life” later come to be measured. Consumption is not just buying. It is a regime of socialization.

From Labor to Platform Consumption. Labor capitalism → mass production → mass market → advertising → consumer identity → status through taste → self-realization → personal brand → platform consumption. Not shopping. Manufacturing the norms of desire and status.

@antonioguterres @UN If an organization cannot prevent wars, cannot enforce its own principles, and cannot act without the approval of dominant powers, then it is not a guarantor of peace. It is diplomatic scenery.

The @UN remains the essential, one-of-a-kind meeting ground to advance peace, sustainable development & human rights. But it is only as strong as countries’ commitment to it. We must come together — across nations, cultures & generations — around a simple truth: Humanity is strongest when we stand as one.

If art, museums, and everything around them do not interest you, that is fine. Just be honest with yourself! Do not spend money on a cultural obligation. Do not stand in line just to tick a box. Do not take space from people who actually came to look.

Idiocracy does not begin when people take photos in museums. It begins when the whole trip is built around the right to say: I was there! Experience shrinks into proof of experience.

The line outside the museum has become a global symbol. The museum is no longer just a place for art. It is now a required stop in cultural consumption. The Louvre. The Vatican. The Hermitage. The Met. The Forbidden City. The National Museum of Korea.