What if everything we think we know about prejudice is backwards?

The Economics of Exploitation argues that hatred doesn't cause inequality—inequality causes hatred. From the Atlantic slave trade to algorithmic discrimination, this groundbreaking book traces how economic exploitation has always come first, with prejudice manufactured afterward to justify the taking.

The pattern is remarkably consistent across centuries. Ancient empires discovered that subjugating rivals was more profitable than killing them—and invented ideologies of inferiority to make subjugation feel natural. European colonizers built the concept of "race" to justify the theft of continents. American corporations purchased convict labor while scientists obligingly "proved" that Black people were suited for exploitation.

The book follows this framework into living memory, showing how Ronald Reagan's policies redirected wealth upward while using cultural division to maintain consent, and how Donald Trump emerged to harvest the resentment that decades of exploitation had sown. When material wages stagnate, the psychological wages of status and superiority become the only compensation on offer—and resentment becomes the only product.

Looking forward, *The Economics of Exploitation* examines how artificial intelligence and genetic engineering may either entrench these patterns permanently or finally expose them clearly enough to be dismantled. Algorithms trained on biased data are already automating discrimination at scale. But superintelligent systems might also see through justifications that humans have accepted for millennia.

Rigorous, evidence-based, and unflinching, this book offers not a call to action but something more valuable: clarity. Understanding the economics behind the hatred is the first step toward seeing the system whole.