Economic totalitarianism is an economic system whereby absolute, exclusionary rule is established by concentrating the means of production and distribution into the hands of a few, but whose mechanisms are not necessarily controlled or owned by government or agencies of government. Such systems include economic monocultures wherein participation within the infrastructure of the economy is segregated according to strict yet otherwise arbitrary rules of conduct.
These rules of conduct may include restrictions on the basis of credit-worthiness or the willingness to relinquish all or a portion of one's anonymity or privacy in any exchange of goods or services in return for various forms of reprentative (putative) value or currency.