The use of fear as a motivator



Fear Is Not a Strategy: It’s a Moral and Financial Failure

Chatgpt with my prompts


Let us be perfectly clear: using fear as a tool of control is not leadership—it is cowardice wearing a necktie. Whether in the boardroom, the newsroom, or Westminster, those who rely on fear reveal not only their bankruptcy of imagination but their moral and financial ineptitude.


In business, fear may deliver short-term compliance, but at a monstrous cost. It kills innovation. It suppresses risk-taking, the very engine of progress. A fearful employee does not speak up when they see inefficiency, corruption, or catastrophe. They cover their arse. They retreat. And this costs money—vast amounts of it. Gallup’s global studies show that disengaged, fearful employees cost the world billions in lost productivity. Fear chokes initiative. The terrified cannot build; they can only survive.


In the media, fear is peddled not as a mistake, but as a business model. Editors long ago realised that headlines about hope don’t sell papers. So instead, we get the daily drip-feed of doom: the economy is collapsing, benefits are destroying society, the young are lazy, the old are greedy. But fear doesn’t make us informed—it makes us inert. When people are bombarded with existential threats, they stop engaging and start numbing. And when citizens numb out, democracy dies. In the long run, a fearful public is a disengaged public—and that is a financial death knell for any media outlet dependent on trust, subscriptions, or relevance.


But nowhere is the failure more grotesque than in politics. Take the Labour Party’s recent flirtation with benefit cuts. A party built on the dignity of labour and the social contract now seems prepared to dangle the threat of poverty over the heads of the most vulnerable, as if desperation were an acceptable incentive. This isn’t just morally obscene—it’s economically stupid. Pushing already-struggling people into deeper insecurity increases NHS burden, crime rates, housing crises, and long-term unemployment. Fear doesn’t get people into work. It gets them into A&E.


And what’s the payoff? A few swing voters swayed by tabloid morality? A pat on the head from the CBI? It is short-sighted, self-defeating policy dressed in the ill-fitting rags of fiscal responsibility. Even the IMF—no bastion of socialist thought—admits that cutting welfare often costs more than it saves.


The morality of fear is bankrupt. The economics of fear are worse. And the politics of fear? They end in voter apathy, social breakdown, and betrayal. This is not “pragmatism.” This is a failure of courage, cloaked in strategy.



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Further Reading & References:


Gallup, “State of the Global Workplace” Reports – on the cost of disengagement in business


IMF Working Papers on Welfare Reform – showing long-term economic harm of benefit cuts


Joseph Rowntree Foundation – reports on poverty, benefits, and economic consequences


Jones, Owen. The Establishment (2014) – especially on Labour’s drift toward fear-based centrism


Furedi, Frank. Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right


Monbiot, George – Essays on moral cowardice in politics: monbiot.com



May 1st 2025 liz lucy robillard & chatgpt



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