At what point do we abandon systems that can no longer be reformed?

There comes a point where you stop pretending something can be fixed. The rot is too deep. The bones are too hollow. What sits in front of us isn’t a system serving the public, it’s a machine that feeds on us while fattening the very people who built it. Both parties have had their chance. Decade after decade, they’ve chosen greed over people, power over responsibility. If they’d wanted to serve us, they’d have done it by now. They haven’t. They won’t.

So the question isn’t if the system can be repaired. The question is how long we’ll keep handing it our labor, our time, and our money while it grinds us down. At some point you stop treating it like a sick friend and start treating it like the gangrenous limb it is. You cut it off before it kills the rest of the body.

Abandonment isn’t about waiting for collapse. It’s about refusing to carry water for people who already made their choice. They abandoned us first. They sold us out to corporations, to donors, to the highest bidder every single time. They keep us hooked to their systems because our dependence is what makes them rich. The only way out is to starve them of that dependence.

That means cutting leashes wherever you can. Stop feeding your wages into industries that gut communities. Stop trusting any politician. Not just the ones you already dislike. Not just one side. All of them. Both parties have failed and both profit from keeping the failure alive. Division isn’t an accident, it’s the design. They keep us busy fighting each other for scraps so we never look up and see who’s taking the harvest. Every argument over crumbs is a win for them and a loss for us. They want us exhausted, distracted, and convinced the neighbor is the enemy, because as long as we’re at each other’s throats we’ll never turn and face the people who built the cage. Stop waiting for change from politicians who’ve proven time and time again that they are not coming to help us. Put your labor, your food, your energy, and your trust into structures you can see, touch, and hold accountable, into your neighbors, your land, your community.

I know because I watched the failure play out from the inside. I worked more than a decade in federal service. I was there through shutdowns that froze paychecks and through policy fights where both parties chose donors over citizens. I saw entire agencies gutted, turned into shells that served private interests while pretending to serve the public. That’s when I knew reform wasn’t coming. That’s when I knew the only honest choice was to walk away.

This isn’t a call for despair. It’s a call for survival. If we keep clinging to institutions that have already chosen profit over dignity, they’ll drag us down with them. If we walk away, we get a chance to build something that actually serves.

They won’t reform. They don’t want to. Which means it’s on us to cut off the leashes, starve them out, and get to work building what comes next. And we can’t waste that work fighting over scraps while the people in power strip everything of value for themselves. Division is their weapon. Solidarity is ours. When we refuse to turn on each other, when we stop mistaking our neighbors for enemies, we take away the one tool they can’t function without.

Exit Farming: Starving the Systems That Farm You is the story of us doing exactly that. Walking away from broken systems and putting our hands into work that builds something real. Stop being farmed. Starve the corporations and politicians that survive on your dependence.