Tyrant's Game

Rent-Seekers, Public and Private, Fear and Hate You

Aristotle nailed it cold, like a Spartan spear through Persian flesh: "It's the habit of tyrants to prefer the company of aliens. Citizens they feel are enemies, but aliens will offer no opposition." That line echoes across the narrow pass of history, cutting deep into today's mess of borders, bucks, and broken communities. Tyrants—landlords and city hall hacks, puffed up like Xerxes on his golden throne—play the same old trick. They shove out locals for outsiders, holding the line for the steady drip of taxpayer-extorted cash. No mercy, just math, as relentless as the Persian hordes crashing against the Hot Gates.

Landlords rule the local roost, their lobby biting hardest at city council doors like Ephialtes whispering betrayals in the night. What do they crave? Tenants who pay fat rents on time, no questions asked, marching in endless waves without a fight. Governments chase the same ghost: tax hauls from sales and properties to keep the machine greased, funding their parasitic dreams. Together, they rig the game, flanking the natives like Xerxes' immortals. Evict the stubborn renters—those Spartan holdouts who fight hikes and demand fixes, shields locked in phalanx. Flip the units to migrants, double the rent, back it with welfare checks from your pocket and mine. Endless flow, no pushback, as the invaders pour through the undefended pass.

This is rent-seeking stripped bare: twisting laws for profit without adding a damn thing of value, a betrayal as foul as showing the enemy the goat path around Thermopylae. Governments pump subsidies into migrant pads, dressed up as kindness or growth—bullshit, it's just another way to swell the ranks against the home guard. Winners? Landlords with locked-in gains, blood-sucking parasite civil servants and politicians with swollen coffers from higher taxes on extra mouths buying crap and higher property values. Losers? You, the citizen, kicked to the curb through violence if needed, one law for the aliens, another for the helots. Migrants get roofs but stay chained to the system, voiceless, too busy living off the gov tit to raise a spear.

History echoes this rot, from the 300 at Thermopylae staring down a million-man tide. Romans shipped in provincials to drown out the home crowd's gripes, empires always importing muscle or mouths to keep the throne safe, diluting the blood of the freeborn. Now it's urban America, Europe—same shit, the narrow streets of New York like the Hot Gates, evictions spiking as migrants flood subsidized spots. San Francisco rents choke out natives, London's working stiffs vanish into the fog, betrayed by their own elites who redraw the map for wallets, demographics be damned, no come and take them defiance allowed.

Who wins this ugly dance? Not you, footing the subsidy bill while your neighborhood crumbles like Spartan shields under arrow storms. Not the migrants, exploited in dead-end jobs, lost in red tape, mere fodder in the tyrant's grand advance. Power grabs the gold: landlords fat on influence, governments bloated on revenue, feasting while the pass falls. Trust shatters, resentment boils, society frays at the edges—until it all collapses, or the citizens go to war with the rent-seekers, standing their ground with a final, furious wrath.

Aristotle saw the scam, clear as the epitaph at Thermopylae: obey the laws and be enslaved, or disobey the laws and maybe die fighting. Today's tyrants run it smoother, hidden in policy papers and diversity slogans, in clever welfare transfer payments, and wall street stock bumps. The pass is still narrow, the stand eternal. Break the cycle: spotlight the thieves, demand citizen-first rules. No opposition means no freedom. Fight back, or watch it all slip away into a night no Persian king ever dreamed possible.

And, well, when all else fails. As it has and will and does. Hoist the colors of your people. Stand your ground, firm. Remember who you, that these are your lands. Defiantly, in blood if you must, hold to that battle cry. Μολὼν λαβέ!!!