This is just another tactic to try and alienate people by restricting movement.
I hadn't considered this angle to it. Is there really no upside for the power brokers to having healthy people make up the peasantry? Must everything truly be an effort to create miserable broken lonely people?
They're materialists who are never satisfied, and projecting their own hedonistic desires onto the rest of the population, they correctly project that it is not sustainable for every human on earth to pursue the same decadent lifestyle that they do. So to keep enough resources to themselves and their friends, they preach a godless version of minimalist spirituality (you will own nothing and be happy) to convince everyone else to be happy with less. They don't intend to pursue that philosophy of course.
I hadn't considered this angle to it. Is there really no upside for the power brokers to having healthy people make up the peasantry? Must everything truly be an effort to create miserable broken lonely people?
Yes, because they are all miserable broken lonely people and they can't allow the "peasantry" to be happier than their "betters".
They're materialists who are never satisfied, and projecting their own hedonistic desires onto the rest of the population, they correctly project that it is not sustainable for every human on earth to pursue the same decadent lifestyle that they do. So to keep enough resources to themselves and their friends, they preach a godless version of minimalist spirituality (you will own nothing and be happy) to convince everyone else to be happy with less. They don't intend to pursue that philosophy of course.