One billionaire buys the newspaper in town
Now the stories change, truth gets watered down
One company owns all the buildings on the block
Now they set all the rents, can't compete, can't shop
One donor funds the campaign, biggest check by far
Now the politician listens when they're behind the bar
One owner of the network, controls what millions see
One buyer for the market, sets the price, holds the key
When everything consolidates to singular control
Easy to manipulate, easy to make whole
System bend the way you want when there's just one to buy
Don't need to corrupt everyone, just the one up high
One buyer, one watcher, one voice
One point of control, no choice
One buyer makes the call
Capture one, you capture all
Used to be ten companies, now it's three
Used to be local papers, now one entity
Used to be independent regulators spread around
Now they all report to one office, one town
Efficiency they called it, streamlining the process
But what they really built was a system to compress
All the power to a singular node
Now corruption's got a clear, efficient road
You don't need to bribe a thousand people anymore
Just the one at the top who opens every door
Consolidation makes it cheaper to capture
Single point of failure, that's the architecture
One buyer, one watcher, one voice
One point of control, no choice
One buyer makes the call
Capture one, you capture all
See, it's not about the person being good or bad
It's about the structure, the setup that we had
Put all your eggs in one basket, hope it doesn't fall
But if it does, you lose it all
Distributed systems, that's redundancy
Multiple watchers, that's security
Can't buy them all if they're independent and spread
Different incentives, different stakes, different threads
But we built the opposite, centralized and neat
Made it easy for the powerful to cheat
One approval needed, one signature, one nod
One buyer for the whole damn facade
When everything flows through one gate
Easy to control the rate
When everyone answers to one boss
Easy to hide the loss
This is why good intentions fail
This is why reforms derail
Not because people don't care
But because the structure's not fair
One buyer, one watcher, one voice
One point of control, no choice
One buyer makes the call
Capture one, you capture all
But what if we built it different?
What if we spread it wide?
Many hands, many watchers
Can't capture them all
Can't capture them all
One buyer
That's the flaw
Many hands
That's the answer