Politics matters to you because you view extortion as a solution to wealth inequality.

Politics matters to me because extortion presents a problem for preserving my unequal wealth.

So it seems the next step in resolving this is for me to separate myself from you geographically, reform local laws to not only deinstitutionalize but also ban all attempts at wealth redistribution and permanently separate market from state while heavily policing the border to make sure you're not able to derive any benefit from the work produced by a community that rejects your backwards socialist ideology.

But the Union as it is makes that kind of radical defederalization difficult if not impossible, so I probably have to take the whole continent to keep myself safe, which I can do by manufacturing an external threat and branding you as a traitor.