The Dirtiest Secret Capitalism Doesn’t Want You to Know

Have the Slow, Catastrophic Costs of Capitalism Exceeded the Long-Term Benefits? Or, Why Capitalism Failed Spectacularly as a Global Economy

When future generations look back at us, at our age, they are going to be struck by three facts, which add up to one dirty, ugly, terrible secret. A secret we are trying to keep from ourselves, I suppose — but I’ll come to that. In this essay, I want to cut through the noise, all the triviality and irrelevance that surround us like an opalescent wash on numbness — and come straight to the shattering truth of now.

The first fact is this. After decades of capitalism…if the world’s income were distributed equally, it would be almost exactly…just $10,000 per person. If that sounds fantastic to you — you couldn’t be more badly mistaken. If you’re the kind of Western liberal Panglossian — a Steven Pinker, a Bill Gates, and so forth — who thinks to himself, while living in opulent luxury,”Wow! You mean those dirty peoples aren’t slaves anymore? They’re not living on $2 a day? Amazing!”…well, my friend, maybe the problem is your moral stance…but I digress.

So first let’s discuss the benefits of decades of capitalism as a global system. What exactly does a theoretical $10,000 a year get you? It’s true that the World Bank defines “middle income” as more than $3K…but does that sound remotely reasonable to you? I didn’t think so. What it doesn’t get you is anything resembling a middle class life, even in a nominally poor country. Would you like to live on $10K? I didn’t think so. Why not? Here’s what you wouldn’t be able to afford: meals out, nice clothes, as in even fast food and fast fashion, self-development, mobility, education, and so forth. Luxuries of any sort, in other words, would be beyond your reach. As would savings, retirement, stability, and peace of mind. Your life would still be a struggle for subsistence, in other words — perhaps you’d just have escaped utter brutalization and dehumanization is all.

What else can’t you afford on $10K a year? You can’t afford to live in a modern democracy. A society in which things like healthcare, education, retirement, transport, media, income, savings, and so on, are all basic rights…