The Shift from physical constraint, to economic constraint, to credit constraint, to informational constraint.

We always have had prisoners (prisons), slavery(military), serfdom(labor), freedom(middle class), liberty (professional class), and sovereignty(political class). We still have all those things. We have just shifted them from physical constraint, to economic constraint, to credit constraint, to informational constraint. All that changes is that it is far cheaper to rule people by each generational evolution of incentives, and they work far harder with each iteration of incentives.