The Metaphorical Guillotine

In 1789, a quiet, spectacled physician named Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed a new method of execution—quick, clinical, equal. It wasn’t meant to be a symbol. It was meant to be merciful. He was laughed at. Mocked. The nobles thought him mad. The aristocracy scoffed at the idea that their heads might one day roll just like the peasants’.

And yet, not long after, the guillotine became the most enduring symbol of the French Revolution. A steel line in the sand. A final, irrevocable judgment passed on those who fed themselves fat while the people starved. Not just a blade—but justice. Not just a death machine—but a reckoning.

Now, in our own time, a healthcare CEO has been shot dead. Not by a revolutionary, not by a radical, but by a man broken by grief and financial ruin. It was not a symbol—it was a symptom. A sign that the pressure is building, and the system can no longer contain it. The market has replaced morality. Profit has replaced policy. And when survival is rationed, the line between madness and meaning begins to blur.

As Jacob Soll writes in Free Market: The History of an Idea, the belief in a self-regulating market is a modern myth. For most of history, even market theorists understood that state intervention was essential—not as an obstacle to freedom, but as its foundation. The idea that the market is a natural, default state is not only wrong—it is dangerous. Left unchecked, it becomes a system of legalized predation, where those with the most power make the rules and the rest are forced to play along or perish.

We see this clearly in the American healthcare system, where insurance companies act less like healers and more like hedge funds. They deny claims, delay treatments, and drown families in paperwork until the sick give up. Health becomes a line item on a balance sheet. And nothing exposes this rot more clearly than insulin.

Insulin, discovered in 1921, was supposed to belong to the world. Its inventors sold the patent for $1, believing no one should profit off saving lives. A hundred years later, a vial of insulin that costs around $5 to make can sell for over $300 in the United States. Three major companies—Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi—control over 90% of the insulin market. They tweak formulations just enough to extend patents and block generics, all while lobbying Congress to keep prices high.

People die rationing insulin. They stretch doses. They go without food to afford it. They crowdfund their survival while insurance executives collect eight-figure bonuses. This isn’t healthcare. It’s hostage-taking.And the cruelest irony? Most Americans think this is normal.

In Germany, insulin costs about $10 a vial. In South Korea, the entire national healthcare system—covering doctor visits, hospital stays, surgeries, and prescriptions—operates at a fraction of the cost of the U.S. system, with better outcomes. You can walk into a clinic in Seoul, be seen in fifteen minutes, and pay twenty dollars without insurance. In Germany, public and private insurance plans coexist, but the government regulates prices, caps out-of-pocket costs, and guarantees universal coverage. No medical bankruptcies. No GoFundMe campaigns. No dying in the richest country on Earth because your deductible is too high.

And yet, try saying the simplest thing aloud: that healthcare should be free at the point of use. Watch the room shift. Watch even the poor—the broken, the indebted, the uninsured—scoff. “Who’s going to pay for it?” they ask, as if they’re not already paying with their lives. Say that rent should be capped, or that corporations shouldn’t be allowed to own a hundred homes in a single ZIP code. Listen for the laughter. Laughter, like the nobles once laughed at Guillotin. Laughter, like a nervous tick of empire just before the fall.

We are mocked for wanting fairness. Mocked for saying food, shelter, and medicine shouldn’t be profit engines. Mocked for demanding that basic human needs not be auctioned to the highest bidder. But here’s the truth: the metaphorical guillotine is already being wheeled into place. It starts as a joke. As an idea. As a whisper that maybe, just maybe, the billionaires and landlords and hospital CEOs are not untouchable after all. And if we do not embrace the metaphor—if we do not regulate, legislate, decapitate the parasitic logic of this system—then the real blade will come. And it will not ask for permission.

But the metaphorical guillotine is not just a policy instrument. It is a psychological and cultural one. It is both bottom-up and top-down. It demands we change laws, yes—but first, it demands we change minds. Especially our own.

Because one of the great tragedies of American life is that the exploited so often fail to recognize their own exploitation. It’s not stupidity. It’s the genius of propaganda. It’s the sleight of hand that took the American Dream—a noble idea once rooted in opportunity and dignity—and twisted it into a fever dream of individual ascent. Now, to suffer is not a systemic failure. It is a personal one. To be poor is not to be underserved—it is to be shamed.

We are conditioned from birth not to side with the downtrodden, but to imagine ourselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. That quote, often attributed to Steinbeck, hits the mark: Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited class, but as temporarily embarrassed capitalists. Whether it came from his pen or not, the truth of it is undeniable. Americans don’t want to end the system. They want their shot at the top of it.

And so, we sneer at the poor. We cheer for billionaires. We call tax cuts for the rich “freedom” and universal healthcare “tyranny.” We don’t want fairness—we want the chance to be unfair. To be the one holding the whip instead of feeling it.

Kurt Vonnegut saw it clearly when he wrote: 

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, ‘It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.’ It is, in fact, a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: ‘If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?’ There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand—glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.​

And here’s the bitter truth: not everyone feels this system in the same way. There’s a line—subtle, shifting, but unmistakable. Once you’re above it, the blades of this machine grow dull. The paperwork is easier. The waiting rooms are shorter. The rent doesn’t eat half your paycheck. Your kid’s school has a library with books actually written in the last decade. The ER doctor calls you by name.

But below that line? You feel everything. Every late fee. Every denied claim. Every food desert and payday loan. And most of all, the exhaustion—the relentless psychological weight of always being almost okay. Not poor enough to qualify for help, but never quite stable enough to rest.

You can see this line drawn across America in roads and rooftops. Drive through a wealthy neighborhood and you’ll find order, beauty, freshly painted shutters, quiet streets, trees that were planted for the next generation. Drive through a solidly middle-class neighborhood and that order starts to crack—shabbier siding, potholes, a gas station instead of a café. Drive through a working-class or lower-middle-class neighborhood, and it’s not just cracked—it’s crumbling. Broken sidewalks, boarded-up windows, dollar stores, decay.

It’s a physical manifestation of the divide. And the gap is growing. Not just in bank accounts, but in spirit. In opportunity. In the subconscious messages we receive every day about who deserves to live well—and who should feel grateful just to survive.

So let the metaphorical guillotine descend—not out of rage, but out of reason. Not to destroy, but to restore. Let it slice through the bloated budgets of “nonprofit” hospitals that sue the sick and reward their CEOs with yachts. Let it cut down the speculators who sit on empty homes while families freeze on sidewalks. Let it dismantle the lie that markets are sacred and suffering is just the cost of doing business.

This is not an anti-capitalist screed. We are not calling for collectivization or command economies. Capitalism—when bounded by decency, fairness, and responsibility—can be an engine of innovation, prosperity, and human flourishing. But unbridled capitalism, capitalism without guardrails, becomes something else entirely. It becomes extraction. It becomes cannibalism. There are ways to make money—good money, even obscene money—without ruining lives. What we’re calling for is not revolution, but regulation. Not central planning, but moral planning. A capitalism with a conscience. A system that rewards ingenuity and effort—but refuses to turn basic human needs into auction blocks.

This guillotine is not made of steel. It is made of law. Of courage. Of clarity. Rent control. Wealth taxes. Universal healthcare. Hard limits on how many homes a person—or a company—can own. Caps on insulin, not dreams. Budgets that reflect humanity, not shareholder value. This is how we wield the blade. This is how we take back what has been stolen.

Because if we don’t—if we keep laughing at the idea of free healthcare, mocking the dream of fair housing, sneering at the very thought of justice—then we will get the real guillotine. Not the symbol. Not the metaphor. The real thing, dragged out of history and into the present by a people with nothing left to lose.

And when that time comes, there will be no more questions.
Just the sound of the blade.