9. Planned obsolescence.Notice how your phone is pretty much useless after only about 3 years? Now remember it’s not just your phone. It’s all kinds of things: cars, electronics, appliances, light bulbs, clothing, shoes, software you need to update before you can use your device and university textbooks that are almost identical but you still have to buy the new ones. Why can’t they make things that last longer? I was told market competition would lead to ever-more useful innovations and ever more of our needs filled.
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Instead, it turns out, competition leads to cosmetic changes but the need for profit has led to a consensus among manufacturers that products should be designed to break down. If we just had one of something and it worked for a lifetime, corporations would never satisfy the demands of the financial report. The market is in replacement of stuff we’ve already paid for. What do you think happens to all that waste? Is there a profitable way of recycling it yet? No? The profit’s still in creating the waste? So we should expect more of it. But can the planet take any more? Which brings us to Number 10: climate change.
10. Climate change.Capitalism is a few centuries old and in that time carbon levels have grown so much our planet is beginning to boil. Carbon levels have
grown steadily every year and that growth shows no signs of slowing down. We’re still burning fossil fuels at an incredible rate, we’re still cutting down trees, we’re still poisoning the oceans, and we’re still farming huge numbers of cows. Just in British Columbia alone this week [over a month ago] there have been nearly
500 deaths due to the heat.
They’ll try to pass responsibility for all this on to you, of course... all responsibility will be now the individual consumer's... “your carbon footprint.” “Climate change? Oh you must not have recycled enough.” Or: “you drove that gas guzzler around for too long, didn't you? Ahah”
Except most emissions don’t come from consumers. They come from a handful of
huge corporations who have more than enough money to do something about it. Not only that, but the
corporations have known their actions lead to climate change for decades. But they lied about it, conducted a misinformation campaign and lobbied against climate legislation and cleaner emissions standards. As a result, people are still denying the human-made effects of climate change during the hottest summer ever, which is also the coldest summer we’ll ever experience again.
Of course, only these 10 things are not a comprehensive list of everything we should hate about capitalism. I haven’t even touched on war, colonialism, racism or slavery.
Capitalism robs us of our freedom and our time and our own choices about how to live our lives, destroys our mental health, and has set fire to the planet we live on. These are not bugs. They are features. And there is no “compassionate capitalism” or “green capitalism” so don’t be seduced by propaganda words. The solution is to destroy the system, to end our dependence on money and governments and corporations, and organize our lives together, voluntarily. Mutual aid and resistance can bring meaning to your life that most jobs can’t. You become part of a much bigger effort that actually solves problems, rather than profiting from them.
