The Myth of Leverage

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By Cliff Potts, CSO & Editor-in-Chief, WPS News

The Lie Everyone Is Taught to Believe

We are repeatedly told that leverage exists for ordinary people if they are patient, disciplined, and willing to endure. Save a little longer. Work a little harder. Stay calm. Be responsible. Eventually, leverage will appear.

It rarely does.

Leverage is not something most people accumulate. It is something they are told they have so they will continue cooperating with systems that do not serve them.

What Leverage Actually Is

Real leverage is the ability to say no and have that refusal matter.

It is the capacity to walk away without immediate harm. It is access to alternatives that cannot be revoked by a landlord, employer, lender, government office, or family obligation. It is insulation from punishment.

Most people do not have this. They have dependencies.

Debt Disguised as Power

Modern systems invert the meaning of leverage. Debt is framed as opportunity. Credit scores are framed as freedom. Flexibility is sold as resilience, when in practice it means permanent instability.

If missing one paycheck collapses your life, you do not have leverage.
If illness, grief, or injury immediately puts you at risk, you do not have leverage.
If you must comply because refusal threatens shelter, food, or medical care, you do not have leverage.

You have exposure.

Why Advice Always Fails the Same Way

Well-meaning advice collapses into slogans because it must. Acknowledging the absence of leverage would require admitting that the system does not reward responsibility — it extracts from it.

“Budget better” assumes surplus.
“Plan ahead” assumes stability.
“Set boundaries” assumes consequences will be respected.

When those assumptions are false, the advice becomes a moral judgment disguised as guidance.

Survival Is Not Strategy

Endurance is often mistaken for leverage. People who survive are praised as proof the system works. What is ignored is the cost of that survival: health, time, relationships, dignity, and choice.

Survival without agency is not success. It is containment.

Why This Matters Now

Telling people they have leverage when they do not is not optimism. It is pacification.

It shifts responsibility downward and excuses structures that depend on fragility to function. It trains people to blame themselves when the promised leverage never arrives.

Understanding this is not surrender. It is clarity.

And clarity is the first step toward refusing myths that keep people compliant.

For further analysis and commentary, see https://Occupy25.com