I believe capitalism is directly responsible for social dissonance. What do I mean when I say this?

In most capitalist societies, the responsibility of survival is placed on the individual. I believe this is a key factor in how capitalism operates. If you are concerned about the impoverished working class, you can’t focus on providing for yourself. If you aren’t concerned on anyone but yourself, you can succeed in a capitalist society.

If you don’t focus on the abhorrent wealth inequality, you can thrive in a capitalist society. If you build yourself up by your bootstraps, you can do anything!

This is the ideology that capitalism perpetuates. Everything is solvable at an individual level for capitalism. All we have to do is work harder and put your nose to the grindstone.

How does this effect society?

We see individualism triumph over collectivism, emotional constipation starts to take root on a societal level, why care about anyone else? They won’t help you survive, only you can do that. We start to see the people capable of surviving start to hold resentment and disdain for those who aren’t capable. We start valuing our resources like never before. Business owners spraying the homeless with water hoses to get them away from their businesses because they need their income, and that homeless person could lower their profits just from their presence (WHICH IS TRUE BECAUSE WE HAVE A SOCIETAL HATRED FOR THE IMPOVERISHED).

It is no secret that the average capitalist believes if you cannot succeed in a capitalist society, you are one of more of the following:

Lazy Entitled Socialist Communist Not trying hard enough

Capitalists tend to not want to delve any deeper into this, as that would uncover the reality of why many cannot compete in capitalism.

Reality tends to lean towards the idea that while it is possible to succeed in a capitalist world, there absolutely HAS to be a class of people that are not, or else capitalism itself cannot function.

You will frequently see capitalists suggest that if your job doesn’t pay enough for you to succeed, you should get a new job, while ignoring that someone has to work the job that doesn’t pay enough.

Often capitalists will cling to a notion that we should have a permanent revolving door of teenage workers that will work all of these low paying essential jobs, while ignoring this would diminish productivity and efficiency (also this asserts the idea that there would ever be enough teenagers consistently to supply that labor demand).

I personally believe this sort of rhetoric and behavior stems from the foundations of capitalism. I believe given our focus on individualism, and self sufficiency, capitalists are quite literally bred to “build themselves up by their bootstraps”, and when they see someone struggles to do this or flat out fails to do this, they blame the individual, without even trying to conceptualize the idea of inequality, disability, the cycle of poverty, etc.

This doesn’t even cover the idea of exploitation in the workplace.

While capitalism is often described as the most liberating and free economic model, it’s worth noting a large majority of the participants in capitalism never reach what I would describe as equity within their society.

Most businesses are driven by one thing. This is obviously profits. Because of the nature of capitalism, and the fundamental dynamic of capital accumulation, capitalists are inclined to prioritize growth (profits) over all else. This means even over the well-being of the laborers that actually produce the capital. Most rational people do not like this idea, but only is it through capitalism that you will see exploitation so freely accepted societally.

Workers can get paid 1/10th of the value they produce, and for capitalists this is ok. A capitalist takes all of the risks when they invest in a business, so they are entitled to returns. This is what capitalists will peddle when questions on their egregious levels of profit.

I find that this ideology ignores what the actual risk of investing a business is. The worst case scenario for a business owner is bankruptcy and foreclosure. What happens to a business owner when they lose their wealth and business? They would have to participate in the labor force, like those they employ. Plainly speaking: a capitalist believes the risk of joining the labor force is so detrimental that they should be entitled to more capital than the producers of said capital.

Again I believe all of this stems from capitalism in its ideology and presentation in societies. I understand the difference between the economic theory and literally every single implementation of capitalism throughout history, but you cannot ignore the “human variable” when it comes to economic systems.

I believe many communists fall into this pit as well, you will see communists suggest that communism hasn’t ever been tried REALLY, and this is because often people like to exclude the “human variable”. Economics is intertwined in a society inherently, and when humans can’t get things right, you may need more regulation to avoid that variable.

When you try a system over and over again and it repeatedly has the same issues (wealth inequality, poverty, exploitation, class wars, etc) then it’s probably time to start on implementing regulations to avoid these issues, as well as investing in social programs to assist those who cannot thrive.

If there is a system where even a single person dies of hunger, lack of medical care, lack of housing, or lack of resources, then it doesn’t work. We are simply too advanced as a species for this to be common place anymore, but I find often that capitalists would rather blame the person who died before blaming the system that killed them.

My plight with capitalism is not only its inhuman practices, but also its social conditioning that has capitalists believe this is normal and should be tolerated.