For millennia, since the advent of industrial agriculture, overlords have been able to parasitize our collective production, initially using food surpluses to support armed gangs of thugs they used to conquer and control society. Since then, as technology advanced through the crude stages of collective production, productivity has increased and overlords have parasitized most of it, and now are more wealthy and powerful than they have ever been.

They like that.

Today, across all fields of industry, decentralization is the cutting edge of technological advance. Centralization can no longer improve productivity through economies of scale. Decentralization of the means of production of the blessings of civilization enables consumers to produce themselves the goods they consume using local materials, and this avails oligarchs no profits and creates no taxable event. Decentralization increases productivity not least by eliminating parasitic losses, and improving efficiency with bespoke local production.

The more decentralization develops and disperses across the world, the more producers retain the wealth they create, and the less overlords parasitize. Decentralization renders centralization and overlords obsolete. The overlords are psychopaths, not morons. They know this is happening, and they can't bribe, bamboozle, or blackmail the laws of physics, and physics determines what technology is possible. Because decentralized production vastly increases productivity, they can't compete. For them, this is the end of the world.

That's why they are ending our world instead. Being psychopaths, they have one value: power. They need power, to rule. They have no interest in being peers in paradise. They'd rule over ashes happily, and that's what they are doing. Burning it all down to keep us from getting away, from becoming free, prosperous, and independent of them.

That's what they're afraid of.

Our happiness.