The Hunger Games - Apfelbaum, Inc.

It is unlikely that many philatelists have read the book The Hunger Games (or seen the movie). The story is ostensibly a post apocalyptic dystopia and the book has been billed as young adult literature. But stripped of its sadistic and salacious elements the book really is about a society that has rejected capitalism as its fundamental organizing principle and replaced it with a Roman slavery model. The real social history of mankind has been the gradual replacement of a population enslaved by a dominant leader, to the world of today where a large middle class and social mobility are the norm. The great economist Thornstein Veblen pointed out a hundred years ago that the major advantage of capitalism is that it channels human aggression in productive ways, allowing aggressive and assertive individuals to succeed within the context of a productive economic system without challenging the ruling order. The process of well oiled, mobile capitalism was greatly facilitated by cheaper and faster communications of which stamps were a significant part. As dystopian literature pointedly shows, we are never too far from totalitarian social structures. Stamps were one of the inventions that paved the way for modern capitalism and the strong middle class which is the greatest protection for our freedom.

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