[Editorial note: the implied misogyny is all mine, and absent in Streeck] [Eurogreen's Macho Moment of the Day^TM Technology]

Are you provoking me, after this?

My gender assignment would be the opposite. When it comes to social-political jostle, subtle linguistic differences between need, demand, require are key. You can indeed start to undermine the social power of Marktvolk by describing them as needy or demanding. But the reality is, the activist financiers are the (rather new) Alpha of the societies around the globe. They are respected, revered, powerful, not questioned, left free to act. The real sovereigns. The public is not even a sex object to them, but a domesticated crowd.

The state is still nominally Alpha - with all demanding critique towards it, but with no real liberty to act. That is close to the Democracy ideal - except that the (more or less) equal status of the government and the people was unspokenly discarded as utopian, and the state became the obedient Beta to the People^TM. All philosophical theories of governing should be refurbished with acknowledgement of hierarchical instincts perhaps.