The WMG page for the webcomic Everything is Fine.
Spoilers are unmarked. Read at your risk.
After all, there is still clearly a government in place but given the flashback Maggie has, everything was still completely normal back then, a complete contrast to what we are seeing now. Meaning there was a clear change in the social order and when we think of who would make something like that happen, it's the government, or at least by someone in it.
This can also be used to explain why it's only been three years since the children where taken away. With such a small timeframe for them to have all been taken and the new living rules to be implemented on the adults, it would have had to have been done with some serious management and manpower. The kind that a government would be able to create.
One possible theory that branches off this one for why all the children are apparently being held hostage is because a deal was made on a massive scale. This could possibly have something to do with why the masks appear to be integrated with those who wear them, like how Officer Tom's brain appears to have grown into it (unless Maggie simply smashed his skull incredibly thoroughly), as the citizens may have been altered by something that was so severe, it prompted society as a whole to strike some sort of bargain in order to have a working world order again. It's possible that it could have been the entire government that offered this solution, an outside force or some people within the pre-existing government but from what we've seen of the surveillance the government was clearly involved, as a tool or otherwise.
- Confirmed in Season 3; they killed the president and took over by military force.
- this is supported by Sam calling himself a "guy in his forties" in episode 42. If we assume Sam, Maggie, Bob, and Linda are all in the same age range then 83 would make sense as a combined stat.
- Jossed in Season 3; the squirrels are used as a way to bypass the GPS trackers..
As each 'tier' is cleared, the survivors have to surveil, betray, and generally torture their fellow man to survive. If they weren't complete sociopaths then, they are expected to be at the end.
The ultimate objective of this farce, by rulers who are definitely not human, is to create a tyrant who both understands how humanity works and actively seeks its oppression. The current overlords may have a total grip over human society, but they are blind to some basic human concepts, so they need this proxy to help them weed out the rebels and learn how to minimize dissent.
The plan: the people most willing to kill to survive/protect their loved ones get to survive. By (un)natural selection, only those who are ruthless enough to murder others yet manipulative enough to hide and rise within society will pass the test, giving them humanity's platonic ideal of the perfect war scalpel: sleeper agents in high government. That's why the government doesn't really care about the rebellion: If the rebellion succeeds, then that creates an overpowered kind of war weapon: a guerilla army of dedicated, sadistic killers that have the intelligence and willpower to wipe out entire planets.
- Because there's no way the populace isn't chipped and therefore no way the rebellion couldn't be found. Sorry, areas with no cell service won't fly as an excuse.
- Given the difficulty of The Game increased at every level. It is likely Hillside and anything above it might be worse than the last. Like pitting couples against each other or single parents being forced to participate something more horrible than hunting Red Status people.
