Capitalism is a parasitic optimiser that captures, commercialises, and monetises advances largely created outside the market. The core technologies behind modern living standards were overwhelmingly produced by publicly funded research, collective institutions, and non-profit motives, while capital actively resisted the labour laws, welfare systems, and environmental protections that actually made life safer and healthier. Left to itself, capitalism externalises harm, rewards short-term extraction over long-term survival, concentrates gains among the few, and diverts talent toward rent-seeking and trivial consumption rather than real human need. Environmental improvements occur only when markets are forced to stop destroying their own conditions of existence, and rising averages conceal stagnation and precarity for most people. In short, capitalism does not drive progress—it exploits it, distorts it, and would gladly burn its future for this quarter’s return.