Capitalism Is Dependence
Capitalism
Regardless of whether you think capitalism is a good economic system or not, there are certainly reasons to dislike capitalism. In the most fundamental form, it is a system based on the desire to maximize profit and hence greed, even at the expense of others. It incentivizes pollution, it widens the gap between the rich and the poor, and when running unchecked has no moral compass to stop it from doing harm. I think it’s fair to say that while capitalism can be said to drive innovation, cheaper goods, and prosperity for some, the downsides of capitalism as it stands today far outweigh the gains.
I always had a bad taste in my mouth about capitalism, for all the reasons I mentioned above, but there was something that really irked me about it that I could never put my finger on until now: the result of capitalism is to force dependence upon us.
I Like Independence
I’ve always been someone who places a lot of pride in being independent. I was raised homeschooled and was responsible for a lot of my own learning. My parents were my teachers, but they also understood the importance of finding the self-motivation to be independent and learn not just what we need to learn, but also what we want to learn. When I lived abroad, I had a lot of pride in my ability to live in other countries where I didn’t speak the language, but eventually learned how to live and how to communicate, and eventually got married to someone from Japan who spoke little English, so my Japanese became fluent.
Now, I’ve found this mission to drive sustainability, and one of the things I’ve always loved about it is that sustainability is a road to increased independence: solar panels and batteries allow you to live off grid if necessary, food gardens allow you to eat without supermarkets, the reuse/repair mindset allows you to buy less clothes, tools, or whatever else you own. It’s a simpler, more independent life.
Capitalism Teaches Us To Be Dependent
Capitalism does the opposite: capitalism says whatever you have, it’s not enough and you need to buy more stuff from us to achieve success in life. Your hair is greasy; you need our shampoo. You don’t have many friends; you need our app to make more. You waste your time cleaning the house; we have a robot that will do it for you. You can’t cook; get your food delivered from us. You don’t know how to grow food; buy it at the supermarket. You can’t make clothes; buy them here.
The list is endless. And we’ve accepted that. And now we live in a society that is increasingly and almost entirely dependent on, and/or addicted to, capitalism.
How independent are you, really?
Let’s imagine a day in the future where capitalism is magically taken away from us (not going to happen, but bear with me for the sake of the thought experiment). What would you do if all the supermarkets disappeared? If all the clothing stores disappeared? If Amazon disappeared? How many people would be able to continue to live and survive? You may be imagining a scene from hundreds of years ago with people living in cottages with dad working on the farm, mom feeding chickens, and the kids picking apples from the orchard. In the past, people had to be more independent. More free. They had to have the skills to truly live on their own.
But do you have the skills to do that? I certainly don’t. And that makes me feel worried. I hate the feeling of being dependent, and the realization that capitalism has made me completely dependent is shocking and sad.
So what’s there to do? Even if we had the ability to magic away capitalism, we can’t: most people don’t have the skills to survive. Especially not here in the developed world.
Capitalism certainly doesn’t want us to become independent so we can’t expect that indepence to come from our current system. Instead, we have to take it upon ourselves to learn those skills and become independent. It means changing our culture. It means becoming different from what is normal. It means rejecting capitalism as a culture. It means connecting with our family and neighbors to work together as a community again.
Will we ever get away from capitalism?
Probably not.
To get everyone growing their own food and making their own clothes is probably not very realistic. Nobody really WANTS that level of independence. But it’s nice to imagine a world where we’ve found a better balance between the addicted, increasingly-dependent society that we have, and a world where people are mostly independent, happy, and satisfied with their lives without having to continually buy things from Amazon to determine their self-worth. We don’t have to go back to the stone page, but if we could start to get back at least some of the rudimentary skills to live independently, I think most people would find that the independence that comes from providing for yourself would bring more joy and satisfaction than most people get from their daily jobs.
This is one more reason to Live ECO: joy, satisfaction, connection, and independence. The more of those things I have in my life, the more happiness I will get from it.
