Vampire Economics: Life-sucking Death in the Capitalist State

Abstract: Considers domestic and global economies in a context of resource control not as wealth transfer mechanisms, but as actual “life” transfer mechanisms.

A question that has persisted for me is why would an individual want to have so much — more houses than they can live in, more food than they can eat, more money that they can spend, more goods than they can handle or use? An over abundance of resources and more than is biologically necessary? And how could they want so much when they can easily see the terrible effects on others of not having enough? How could a person become so callous to another’s suffering? I began to think of two coordinated systems, one outlined in Terror Management Theory — the fear of death and denial of that fear — and state and global economic structures. I started to think of our “human system” as one that transferred actual life — of quality and duration — from a base and upward through a social hierarchy. We didn’t have a “trickle down” economics, but instead a “flow up” economics, a “sucking” of life that could only be described as vampirism.

I was triggered to coin this term, Vampire Economics, while reading the the 2/2025 Senate Report “Working-Class Americans Can Expect to Die at Least 7 years Earlier Than the Wealthy.” Of course, these untimely deaths are from many individual causes but can be summed up as being a “deprivation of resources.”

The 3/2025 Senate Report calculates that the top 1% of Americans can expect to live to an average of 84.3 years old, while the bottom 50% ranked by median household income live an average of 77.4 years, a difference of 7 years. The difference between the top 1% and everyone else, the 99% is still a difference of about 4 years. Our 3000 billionaires worldwide have a life expectancy of 86 years. So, statistically even if you have millions or just a couple of buck, no matter where you are, from the very bottom to the upper mark of 3000 billionaires, statistically you will die sooner than someone above, and that’s because they have access to more resources than you do.

Quid Pro Quo: Death for Life

The American System, a vampire economics, can be seen as a rate of exchange, a quid pro quo: that matches early death for many for the longevity of the few. This rate of exchange, early death for increased longevity, becomes more stark when we widen our pool to the world capitalist system. Worldwide, life expectancy is about 72 years, but in some countries the death rates are as low as 55 years. The average longevity in all of India, with over a billion in population, is about 68 years. When the average longevity of about 3,000 billionaires worldwide is about 86 years, the difference between the many billion who die young and the statistically non-existent class of billionaires is a lot of years.

Measured by its effect, its plain: the American System and World Capitalism is a form of vampirism. The world system is a rate of exchange: death for 99% of the world population in exchange for the extended life of the 1%. This rate of exchange is a transfers — not of wealth — but the only thing of real value: life itself.

Untimely Death is a Measure of Effect

Death is a Measure of Effect (MOE) of our “system,” its policies, institutions, and mechanisms. Systems of wealth transfer are like the military’s “firepower.” Systems are used “to take” from one and give to another. Propaganda is a “force multiplier.” It is designed to confuse those you take from. American vampirism combines capitalism’s system of wealth transfer and propaganda that quells revolt.

Our System as a Rate of Exchange

We can call our “loss of life” our system’s “rate of negative impact.” On the other end of the spectrum, “rates of positive impact” are an increase in longevity. Positive rates rise with wealth in the 1%, 0.1%, and 0.01%, 0.001% etc.. . We must have both wealth transfer and a steady stream of diverting propaganda to create the “boiling frog effect.”

The Boiling Frog Effect says something about our inability to peceive the threat of Mathematical Rates over time. Biologically, we are built to respond to “fast rates of sensory change” like a charging rhino. It isn’t that we’re stupid frogs. It’s that media bombards us with constant existential threats. We prioritize the immediate threat over the one maybe happening later.

Cancer and other non-communicable diseases like diabetes and heart disease are caused by the control of resources. Resources can be seen as those that positively effect longevity. These might be access to clean air, clean water, healthy foods, holistic and preventative medical care as well as unrestricted access to invasive medical care when necessary. It includes a non-exposure to toxins and other causes of loss of life, like violence and deprivation. And there are resources that protect against morbidity and empower autonomy to act in one’s own best interest. There are structures — like housing — and access to resources like a quality education. There is particularly a deep education in relevant science, mathematics, human biology and psychology.

Control of Resources Means Life or Death

We must have a deep education in mathematics that allows us to understand the very relevant meaning of mathematical rates of increase and decline, life and death. The American public is trained and conditioned in “thinking fast” whereas industry professionals “think slow.” More than that, industry professionals use our biological “fast thinking” against us, putting out fires seeing disasters where there are none, divert our attention from what is right in front of us: we die, they live on. The richest live longer because they in effect take lives of those below. This constitutes a wealth transfer and a life-threatening private control of resources. It could be called a Morbidity-Longevity Rate of Exchange, but could also be called by its other name: war.

According to the Senate Committee Report, in the US, our system deprives 66.6 million households of resources at a cost of 7 years of life each, and totaling 466.2 million years of life. The system in turn provides the top 1% resources that allow the 1% a 7 year gain. But the gain in a few years of life for the few is not equal to the loss of millions of years of life for the very many.

The loss to gain ratio is 50:1. In other words, 50 years of life lost by the lower 50% achieves a gain of 1 year of life for the top 1%. The entire life of a worker, 50 years, is worth one year of life for a 1%er.

Toxic environmental exposure with outcomes of untimely death is caused by unequal access to resources. The untimely death of the working class is caused by the environmental living conditions of the working class. The 1% have access to 50x the resources that contribute to their longevity. The loss of those resources leads to the untimely deaths in 66.6 million households. Unequal access to resources is maintained through violence and the threat of violence we call “capitalism.”

Rockefeller, 97, giving a dime to a child around 1900 who, statistically, will die at 47

Environment Causes Death

These numbers, a disparity of death rates or cancer death rates, are a measure of a biological fact: environment is the cause of untimely death and conversely longevity.

A disparity in environment, as determined by income, and its effect on longevity can be seen in an analysis of cancer deaths. A JAMA Network Open⁠ analyzed data from U.S. Counties and found that cancer death rate in high income counties were 1.85% in high-income counties and 2.3 % in low-income counties. That’s an increased of 0.18 percent. In each of these counties there will be a massive disparity in income and longevity, but the statistics show a general trend. The environment of the individual, as shaped by economic factors, is the greatest indictor in untimely death, including cancer. Cancer is just one form of untimely death that is the result of a deprivation of resources.

Every organism has a built in biological clock. The Greenland Shark and Ocean Quahog Clam can live over 500 years. A dog is said to live 7 years during one “human year.” The human body can survive to about 115 years. Environment is the largest indicator of untimely death. The 1%er obsession with patriarchal lineage, heredity, ‘traits’, race, and genetics is a propagandistic smokescreen. Your environment in regard to available resources is determined by economic class and is the determinant of either early death or statistical longevity.

Because of the exchange rate of death for life in the American and worldwide system, it is also possible to say there is an exchange rate between two states or environmental conditions. One state exists with a deprivation of resources and the other with an overabundance of resources. One way to look at the statistics it to think “poorer you are, the shorter your life and the richer you are the longer it will be.” Individually, we might think we can beat the odds. But another way to look at it is that you are situated in an economic environment which determines your access to resources. A complete deprivation of resources is the most toxic — no water, food, education, etc, and a complete control over environmental resources, including human resources, is the most contributory to longevity. Where are you on the scale?

While we believe we “share” an environment, the measure of death rates tells us that is far from the truth. You could be standing next to someone but your environments are completely different. Your access to and restrictions from resources and not your body or your choices will determine how long each of you will live.

American Vampirism is World Vampirism

And this condition of disparate environmental resources isn’t just an issue in the US. Economic disparity and death rates coordinate internationally. The U.S. is far from the top of the list when it comes to longevity. Ranked 48, below Hong Kong, Japan, and 47 others, the US median life expectancy of just below 80. Our “system” does not take care of us as well as we should. But even the best is still below the billionaire average. Still, the US is in the top quarter of 201 other countries, which means that collectively we have more available resources about 150 other countries. India and China have greater populations and the combined populations of all the countries numbers toward our 8.2 billion total. Looking at Chad or Nigeria with an average life expectancy of about 55 we see a Measure of Effect of a worldwide system.

We can calculate a country’s D/L rate by calculating the GDP/population and average lifespan. The U.S. with 23.32% of the world economy (pop. 340M) has an average of 77.43 years. South Korea (pop. 50M) with 1/7 the population of the US has only 1/14 of the GDP (1.61%). But SK has a higher average life span of 82.68 years. While the US might be ranked a surprising #48 in longevity, its death/life rate is a steeper curve than many more countries with fewer resources per capita. The D/L Rate describes both populations per capita access to resources and a system’s virulence in regard to its population.

The control of resources by the few can be seen as a violence against the bodies of the very, very many. Toleration of this worldwide system of violent control within countries and between countries worldwide is only maintained with violence and propaganda, in wars, the violent suppression of civil unrest, and the advancement of ignorance in the population.

Vampire Economics is historical and institutionalized. Its not about the vampire.

The Billionaires

It’s not all about the billionaires. But it is about the resource control system that is their throne. Looking at billionaires who died in 2022–2023, the average lifespan was 86 years. The average lifespan worldwide was about 72 years. That’s a 14 year difference. Forbes calculates the world’s billionaires to number just over 3,000. A 42,000 year gain for billionaires worldwide cost 114.8 billion years of life from everyone else. That should blow our minds.

A 42,000 year gain for billionaires cost 114.8 billion years of life from everyone else.

If we think of untimely death and longevity as a quid pro quo between billionaires and everyone else we have a cost/gain ratio of nearly three million years of life from everyone for one year of life for one billionaire. For the billionaire, then, 1 year of life is worth 2.73 million years of everyone else’s life. Think about that the next time you have dinner with a billionaire.

Ramses II died in his 90s. The person who carved his statue died (statistically) at 25

Cause of Death: Toxic Environment

At one pole is an environment of extreme toxicity that yields an extraordinary numbers in untimely death. At the other, amongst the very richest in the world, we have a near optimum longevity reached through a complete access to all available resources. One environmental pole is toxic, providing both a lack of health promoting resources and a plethora of toxic substitutes. The other is resource rich and allows individuals to achieve toward a maximum longevity and with the highest quality. Those environmentally disadvantaged lose years of life. Those environmentally advantaged gain years of life. The difference is an unequal distribution of world resources.

It’s all about “privatization” of resources

Statistical evidence gathered in the 1900s indicated to analysts that cancer was caused by civilization. But it wasn’t “civilization” that caused cancer. It was an exploitive division of labor that began thousands of years before. A forced division of labor created two environmental spheres where one had power over resources and the other was manipulated by that power.

Today, that initial usurpation of the commons has dispossessed billions of people from life-supporting resources. The disparity in untimely death and longevity is evidenced in the oldest know medical text, the Edwin Smith Papyrus. The papyrus shows a high rate of injury and death among a working class just as the Senate Committee report “Working-Class Americans Can Expect to Die at Least 7 years Earlier Than The Wealthy” does today. While the life expectancy of workers has increased, the ratio of years lost to year gained has risen. And those in control of resources who still maintain a right of “life and death” over the population, by either sharing or restricting access to environmental resources.

James Baldwin wrote in “Sonny’s Blues” that, “ain’t nobody wants to die never.” That was true in 1957, it was true of the sculptor of Ramses II’s likeness, it is true today among billions of world citizens. And yet we do at rates far in excess of our controlling billionaire cousins.

Death rates are the Measure of Effect (MOE) of our American and global system that we can understand through a too on-the-nose metaphor of vampirism. The result is not just a class hierarchy and war, arranged and maintained with a capitalistic economy under an American and global system. It should be understood as an actual vampirism, a “life transfer.” Vampire economics describes the dynamic draining action of statistical life of very many and channeling it into the quality of life of the very few.