"... in the end, the real enemy of freedom and prosperity today is the despotism represented by the Capitol elites, or what has been called “America’s ruling class.”

Tyranny is the True Enemy

by Jordan Ballor

... the most salient warning of the Hunger Games trilogy for us today lies not in the ill-conceived marketing schemes of businesses, which must be admitted are legion , but rather in the threat represented by the elite capture of political power, whether cronyist or socialist, including what economists call corporatism, rent seeking, and regulatory capture.

The second installment of the Hunger Games trilogy, “Catching Fire,” opened last weekend to popular and critical acclaim, and the film adaptation certainly does not disappoint. 

It is generally a faithful and gripping translation of Suzanne Collins’ post-apocalyptic vision of the origins of revolution in a tyrannical world. Much has been made of the religious, and even specifically Christian, themes of the series. But amidst the varied reception of the trilogy by Christian commentators, it is worth pondering what is perhaps the dominant message of the second film, captured in Haymitch Abernathy’s warning: “Remember who the real enemy is.”

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Wilkinson is right to point to hedonism as a seedbed for tyranny. As Gamemaker Heavensbee puts it memorably in the film, the parties characteristic of Capitol socialites are enjoyable only to the extent that one’s moral faculties are inured to the decadence. Wilkinson cogently collates a series of consumption patterns that Capitol citizens pursue that ought to arouse our horror and disgust.

But the specific way this connection between materialistic sensuality and tyranny works out in Panem is that the hedonistic consumerism of the Capitol elites is enabled by extraction of the economic power of the districts. Panem isn’t anything like a functioning market economy, certainly not a free market. It is, instead, what economists like Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson rightly identify as an “extractive” economy. 

The tyranny of President Snow and the Capitol’s ruling class comes in the exclusion of the vast majority of the people of Panem from the economic institutions that are so necessary for flourishing, things like property rights, the right to associate and to trade freely, and the right to enjoy the fruits of one’s own labor.

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