The Capture of the State by Those Who Feel Little of the Common Good

When Suffering Becomes Financial Margin

We begin this third blog by looking at a pain that is difficult to name: Brazil often seems to work a lot, pay a lot, suffer a lot, and still see concrete life improve only a little.

The population feels this in the body. It feels it in household debt, fear in the streets, long commutes, fragile schools, health care that arrives late, electricity bills, threatened water, food insecurity, tight wages, abandoned neighborhoods, destroyed biomes, and the feeling that something always escapes far away from real life.

The common word for this is usually corruption. But we need to open another layer. The problem can be deeper than visible corruption. It can be State capture.

State capture happens when economic, political, religious, financial, corporate, or digital groups manage to shape public rules in favor of their own interests. They operate through laws, contracts, subsidies, debt, privatizations, concessions, parliamentary amendments, data, land, platforms, and narratives. The State continues to look public, but from within, it begins to function as a machine of extraction.

Jiwasa helps us perceive this capture.

Jiwasa is the common good felt in the Body-Territory. It is the perception that my life depends on the lives of other bodies, on water, land, forest, city, food, energy, school, health, data, safety, and the common future.

Those who feel Jiwasa tend to ask: does this improve our life?

Those who feel little Jiwasa tend to ask: how can value be captured from this?

The difference seems small, but it can change an entire country.

When the system rewards those who feel little of the common good, politics becomes an opportunity for capture. Debt becomes a product. The contract becomes a channel of extraction. The corporate entity becomes a mask. The budget amendment becomes dependence. Land becomes an asset. Data becomes merchandise. The biome becomes inventory. Suffering becomes a market. The State becomes an intermediary for private interests.

The literature on State capture helps us see this phenomenon. It shows that there is a type of corruption that goes beyond small bribery. It is the capacity to influence laws, institutions, and public policies so that the rule is already born tilted in favor of a few. In this case, exploitation enters through the door of legality. Everything seems formal, signed, published, and contracted, while the concrete result weakens the Body-Territory of the population.

The debt-based economy also enters this conversation. In the modern economy, a large part of money emerges when banks grant credit. This means that money, debt, interest, and risk are deeply connected. When value creation depends too much on debt and intermediation, the system begins to favor those who dominate contracts, guarantees, assets, information, and influence. Those who live in the territory pay the cost; those who operate from a distance capture the margin.

Then a strong constitutional question appears:

who should guide Brazil’s economic metabolism?

Only specialists in financial flows?
Only banks, funds, consulting firms, investors, and debt operators?
Only groups that look at spreadsheets and perceive little of the living body of the territory?

We propose another direction: the Brazilian economy needs to include specialists in human metabolism, complex systems, energy, water, food, biomes, data, health, education, territorial carbon, and concrete life. Economy is also metabolism. And metabolism begins in the body.

This change requires constitutional barriers against State capture.

The first barrier would be full traceability of public money.

Every subsidy, incentive, public credit, strategic contract, conditional tax benefit, budget amendment, special transfer, and development program should have a public path, final beneficiary, territorial impact, and material justification. The citizen needs to see who received it, why they received it, which real need of the territory will be addressed, and which concrete benefit will be produced.

Possible constitutional text:

Article 37-A — Every public resource allocated to subsidy, incentive, special transfer, strategic contract, public credit, territorial policy, or development program shall have full traceability, identification of the final beneficiary, transparency of execution, and demonstration of concrete benefit to the impacted Body-Territory.

The second barrier would be the real identification of who stands behind corporate entities.

Brazil needs to know who the final beneficiaries are behind companies, holdings, funds, associations, and corporate chains that receive public money, buy land, operate mining, control data, win public bids, explore essential services, or operate in strategic sectors.

Possible constitutional text:

Article 37-B — Legal entities that receive public resources, explore strategic activities, operate sensitive data, hold land, execute infrastructure, or act in essential services shall disclose their final beneficiary, corporate chain, direct and indirect controllers, relevant economic ties, and possible conflicts of interest.

In simple language: a corporate entity needs a face.

The third barrier would be the Jiwasa test of territorial benefit.

Before approving a project, contract, amendment, or subsidy, the State should answer: which real pain of the Body-Territory will be relieved? Housing? Water? Electricity? Health? Education? Safety? Food? Clean energy? Biome? Data? Work? Reduction of social stress? Local sovereignty?

Possible constitutional text:

Article 37-C — Policies, contracts, subsidies, and projects with territorial impact shall present a Jiwasa Test of Public Benefit, demonstrating the real need addressed, impact on the Body-Territory, risk of capture, final beneficiary, environmental cost, social cost, and citizen control mechanism.

The fourth barrier would be the use of traceable public digital currency for subsidized resources.

All subsidized public money could circulate through Drex or equivalent technology, with defined purpose, transparency, and traceability. This expands the possibility of seeing whether the resource reached concrete life or became financial triangulation, remittance, speculation, or a disguised return as foreign investment.

Possible constitutional text:

Article 164-A — Subsidized public resources, economic incentives, strategic credits, and special transfers may be executed through Brazilian public digital currency, with traceability, constitutional purpose, social control, and linkage to the benefit of the Body-Territory.

The fifth barrier would be protecting the State against revolving doors and technical capture.

We can create rules so that people who regulate strategic sectors are also protected against conflicts of interest. Economy, energy, mining, data, banks, health, education, carbon, infrastructure, and territorial defense require transparency regarding previous ties, future interests, and networks of influence.

Possible constitutional text:

Article 37-D — The occupation of strategic positions in regulation, economic planning, budget, infrastructure, mining, energy, data, public finance, and the environment shall observe rules to prevent institutional capture, conflicts of interest, revolving doors, economic dependence, and concentration of private influence.

The sixth barrier would be linking territorial exploitation to the cost of the living territory.

When an area of native forest becomes a city, power plant, mining site, plantation, highway, data center, or infrastructure, there is an ecological cost. The Constitution can require every intensive use of land to calculate, at a minimum, the value that territory would produce as native forest in carbon, water, biodiversity, climate regulation, and local life.

Possible constitutional text:

Article 225-A — The intensive economic use of the national territory shall consider the ecological value of the corresponding native cover, including territorial carbon, water, biodiversity, climate regulation, social impact, and regeneration responsibility.

Here, the economy begins to feel the biome.

The seventh barrier would be protecting Jiwasa against false belonging.

Many groups simulate community. They create bubbles, slogans, symbols, enemies, fixed leaders, and monetized belonging. But true Jiwasa increases autonomy, leadership rotation, territorial care, and shared decision-making.

Possible constitutional text:

Article 14-B — Territorial participation mechanisms shall promote plurality, rotation, transparency, accessibility, and protection against economic, religious, partisan, algorithmic, or corporate capture.

In simple language: we participate to care for the territory, and leaders exist as a temporary function of service.

Now the reader’s question changes.

The Brazilian problem becomes deeper than “someone stole.” The question becomes:

who designed the rule?
who benefited from the rule?
who suffered because of the rule?
who was hidden behind the corporate entity?
who received the subsidy?
who paid the territorial cost?
who kept the debt?
who kept the margin?
who feels the pain in the body?
who lives far from the damage and close to the profit?

This is the passage toward a Body-Territory Constitution.

The Constitution needs to protect Brazil from systems that reward low sensitivity to the common good. It needs to create filters to prevent public money, land, data, biomes, amendments, contracts, and debt from being captured by structures that feel little Jiwasa.

We can call this the constitutional defense of belonging.

Defending belonging means tracking public money.
Defending belonging means showing the final beneficiary.
Defending belonging means preventing faceless corporate entities.
Defending belonging means measuring territorial impact.
Defending belonging means putting the biome into the calculation.
Defending belonging means making subsidies serve concrete life.
Defending belonging means protecting the budget against opaque interests.
Defending belonging means bringing the citizen into the decision.

Translational Jiwasa is this: the reader perceives that their daily pain may be connected to an invisible architecture of capture.

The high bill, the debt, the precariousness, the fear, the lack of housing, the fragile school, the late health care, the flood, the drought, the abandoned neighborhood, and the destroyed biome may be connected to rules that favor those who extract value from the territory without living its consequences.

Constitutional reform needs to create barriers against this kind of power.

When those who feel little of the common good control rules, budgets, public debt, land, data, and contracts, the Constitution becomes a tool of exploitation.

When we place Jiwasa inside the Constitution, the rule changes direction.

The State begins to ask: does this resource increase concrete life?
Does this contract protect the Body-Territory?
Does this subsidy generate value for Brazil?
Does this company have a face?
Does this project respect the biome?
Can this money be tracked?
Does this leader allow rotation?
Does this policy reduce suffering, or does it transform suffering into profit?

We can improve Brazil by creating a Constitution that recognizes the risk of capture and protects the State through the path of materiality.

Brazil needs economy, technology, credit, companies, investment, and productivity. But all of this gains greater value when it serves the Body-Territory.

Wealth that destroys territory impoverishes the future.
Debt that captures the body weakens sovereignty.
A contract that hides the final beneficiary weakens democracy.
A subsidy that becomes value flight weakens the municipality.
Politics that lives from bubbles weakens Brazilianness.

Jiwasa points to another path.

The economy can serve life.
Public money can be traceable.
A corporate entity can have a face.
The biome can enter the calculation.
A budget amendment can listen to the territory.
A subsidy can strengthen sovereignty.
Planning can be born from the Body-Territory.
The Constitution can protect us from those who feel little of us.

This is the core of Blog 3.

The capture of the State begins when the common good becomes a detail.
The recovery of the State begins when Jiwasa becomes a constitutional principle for defending concrete life.

References and Foundations for Further Development

Bank of England — money creation in the modern economy through bank credit.

Central Bank of Brazil — Drex as the Brazilian public digital currency under development.

World Bank — concept of State capture and private influence over public rules.

OECD — beneficial ownership, corporate transparency, and prevention of misuse of legal entities.

Literature on empathy, psychopathic traits, Machiavellianism, and the Dark Triad — distinction between cognitive empathy, affective empathy, manipulation, and low sensitivity to others.

Antonio Damasio — body, feeling, decision-making, and the materiality of consciousness.

Bruce McEwen — allostatic load, chronic stress, and the physiological cost of social insecurity.

David Graeber and David Wengrow — plural forms of collective organization, critique of power concentration, and the importance of social rotation.