Capitalism incentivizes the relentless pursuit of efficient production and excessive overconsumption. However, history and economics academically teach us that capitalism lifted the world out of poverty and yielded unparalleled economic opportunity and growth, along with infinite consumer choice. But what they generally do not teach us about is the perpetual cycle of inequality and exploitation that capitalism promotes. Recently, we have been coming to learn of capitalism’s formidable shortcoming: prioritizing profit over environmental and social sustainability. Human welfare comes second to profit, making us a quantifiable liability while allowing the torture and destruction of other animals and plants.
Capitalism is said to drive innovation. But if we look to pre-industrial eras, we can still find innovation. In fact, it was on the shoulders of such innovations that we propelled a technological revolution. The raised living standards that we attribute to capitalist pursuit are not equally distributed among the global population, and are certainly not advantageous to other living things.
Capitalism empowers the individual to pursue their desires. This is said to foster a dynamic market where we can find anything we want if we can afford to buy it. The collective welfare is sacrificed for the benefit of the selfish interests of a few.
Capitalism requires efficient productivity to thrive. The model relies on a simple equation of profit being the difference between sale and cost prices. In order to maximize profit, we must minimize costs through an efficient production and supply model. On the sales side, we should also seek to maximize revenue by selling as much as possible through myriad techniques, regardless of excess, waste, and overconsumption.
Capitalism is built on a so-called free market model where competition forces all players to produce their best effort. This is true of the opening stage of competition. But once the decades or centuries have passed, barriers to entry create thick walls that become impenetrable to further competition, thus relaxing the competitive edge in quality, technology, and price.
The points that are generally raised as capitalism’s winning arguments are indeed also its pain points. Profit maximization and the absolute prioritization of profit over all lead to various problems of sustainability in a finite world. The same economics equations can show that the gap between the one percent richest of the globe and the near entirety of the human population will continue to grow. As the rich become richer, resource ownership falls into the hands of lesser people controlling the market. Naturally, the labor force, the rest of the population outside of this controlling group, will suffer by economic exploitation and slavery. In much the same way, when profit maximization is the sole contributing value to resource management, we will also exploit these resources mindlessly, as we have been.
The deteriorating environment is not salvageable. If we continue on this path, we will very soon reach the point of no return. We had already set this alert limit at a global temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius. However, as evidence shows, we are surely now thinking of how to survive in the space between 1.5 and 3 degrees Celsius increase in global temperature. We are no longer considering the reality of a sub-1.5-degree increase. Capitalism prioritizes short-term benefits, i.e. instant profit, over long-term environmental sustainability. In this model, we do not have variables to balance sustainability and profit; we simply have an equation to direct us to the equilibrium price, which is nothing more than the price at which we do maximize profit.
Due to its free market policy, capitalism is a volatile socioeconomic order. We are all too familiar with economic boom and bust cycles, recessions and even depressions. In this post-pandemic era, we have become very familiar with inflation; in parts of the world that never knew hyperinflation, we are experiencing price increases to food items that jeopardize survival. When recessions occur, our governments bail out the biggest competitors first because they account for the largest percentage of economic growth. If the towers of capitalism in our communities fail, they crumble on top of our frail sheds. We all collapse, inviting economic depression. To avoid this, we sacrifice our smaller players, our common population, to rescue the wealthiest. This is very similar to having the option to buy an insurance policy that ensures you remain alive in the event of a plane crash. The catch is that the policy is so expensive that only a fraction of those seated in first class can afford it.
Capitalism has a veritable Pinocchio paradox. On the one hand, it offers a lie for every promise guaranteed to be broken by its utterance. On the other hand, it has a nose for growth, ultimately winning when the market is on a continuous economic growth trajectory. This means we must consume more year after year in order to satisfy capitalism and keep from destroying our livelihood. However, the math is no rocket science. If we are consuming more every year, how do we support the growth with a finite natural resource supply and worsening global living conditions? We can call out capitalism for the lies we have been told, but it is simply not enough. We must hold the system and its proponents accountable for resolving this Pinocchio paradox; what happens when the environment can no longer supply the greed of our richest?
For too long we have lied to ourselves and hypocritically bought into the capitalist illusion. We have walked ourselves into the capitalism matrix directed by disinformation. We make pretenses that we know cannot account for its problems. We argue in absolute delusion to provide solutions to capitalism’s failings. Market regulations, social safety nets, and sustainable practices are three famous distractions to keep people feeding the system. In the illusion of prosperity we suggest implementing fair rules meant to protect labor, consumers, and the environment. The fact is, protecting labor translates to supply inefficiency in economics. Consumer protection is impossible because in the food industry alone it would mean banning all the unhealthy ingredients and chemicals sold by the marketing pretense of being actual food. Any attempt to restore and rehabilitate the environment requires an immediate shift from fossil fuels and a halt of excessive production and overconsumption. These are absolute blockers to profit maximization and by a realistic analysis likely to plunge the economic world into a chaos much worse than 1929. But we cannot implement sustainable practices if we are to maintain capitalism aimed at feeding our insatiably wealthiest pharaohs. The trickled down financial effect of such excessive wealth accumulation means that our policymakers are also inclined to proceed with only as much shallow reform as does not seriously affect their bosses’ continuous and systematic hoarding of money.
The worse piece of disinformation comes by way of social welfare. We are told that capitalism has improved the lives of many and contributed to an unprecedented global rise out of poverty. How can we know that if we have not known any other socioeconomic system for two centuries? We never were able to test socialism or any other system because the capitalist powers ensured their collapse through violence, meddling, propaganda, and corruption. Would we have fared better socially if we had improved our technology and infrastructure yet maintained a different approach to what prosperity means to us as a global ensemble? We never had a choice in the matter. Capitalism was forced upon every human in a manner which teaches us very early on in life that to survive is to compete fiercely, indifferently, and ferociously.
Once the dust of capitalism’s wars settled and the survival of the greediest was hierarchically categorized, we turned to ensuring that we could maintain slavery – with a modern twist since abolition. We prescribed social safety nets. This is nothing fancier than suggesting to those who failed in the profit share Olympics that they are entitled to some trivial compensation for participating. We now take a negligible amount of money from the wealthiest in order to offset their taxes to help the poorest be productive as labor and consumer, buying what they themselves produce at a greater cost than their value in the production cycle. Our governments suggest that these measures will ensure the public’s basic sustenance needs are met. Why are we satisfied with ensuring the basic sustenance needs of a majority when a negligible minority holds all global wealth? Surely this is a faulty depiction of a successful socially progressive system.
Ultimately, ensuring that capitalism fosters both economic prosperity and social justice is a unicorn chasing effort. To sell this lie, we are constantly academically and financially influencing reevaluation and adaptation to ensure that the public agrees to prioritize money and profit over all else, lest they choose to fail. Providing a balanced perspective to both sides of the argument, without taking sides or advocating for any specific solutions, encourages critical thinking and constructive dialogue against the backdrop of biased delusion. Capitalism requires us to prioritize profit over social wellbeing, the environment, all life, and existence. The delusion begins at the assumption point that money can hold any value when facing a tsunami or severe food shortage. Capitalism mandates abolishing compassion because communal and even global sentimentality encourages inefficiency. Can we ever find market equilibrium when such balance appoints measurable risks to undermine life, sustainability, rights, freedom, equality, and every moral value we can throw at capitalism? All of this, just so 500 million people out of 8 billion can live in the security that all should live in, while they threaten the viability and continuity of life on this planet!
Capitalism is genocide to mass extinction proportion. It is an illusionist hiding real costs while falsely feeding our bias for security and prosperity. We must refrain and revolt in order to exist.
