I was struck by this passage from Against the Grain (by James Scott, who also wrote Seeing Like A State; thanks to my friend Cathy for the rec):
Domesticated animals—especially sheep and goats, in this case—can be seen in the same light. They are our dedicated, four-footed (or, in the cases of chickens, ducks, and geese, two-footed) servant foragers. Thanks to their gut bacteria, they can digest plants that we cannot find and/or break down and can bring them back to us, as it were, in their “cooked” form as fat and protein, which we both crave and can digest. We selectively breed these domesticates for the qualities we desire: rapid reproduction, toleration of confinement, docility, meat, and milk and wool production.
Isn’t this what governments and large institutions are doing to us? Whether intentional or purely through the invisible logic of incentives…
The main exception from the above list seems to be rapid reproduction, as fertility rates in developed countries are very clearly declining. But confinement…docility…production… one only needs to look at the inexorable march of capitalism and centralized power structures to see some worrying trends…