Capitalism Feeds Us and Then Has to Convince Us We Are Hungry

I want to state a contradiction at the heart of the economic system we live under, concede everything that needs conceding, and then ask why it is never addressed.

The Concession

Capitalism makes sure we have enough to eat. This is not a small thing. Every alternative that has been tried at scale failed at precisely that task, and some failed catastrophically. Whatever else is said below, the system driven by consumption is the only one we know of that reliably fills the shops, and I am not proposing to replace it with one that does not.

The Contradiction

The same engine that fills the shops must also empty them. It runs on consumption, and consumption has to be produced. Nobody consumes at the rate the system requires out of need, because the needs were met long ago. So the system must generate want.

It does this by telling us, constantly and expertly, that we need what we do not have, and that the people who have it are happier than we are. That is what the advertising industry is for. It is not an accident or an excess of the system; it is a load-bearing component. Remove it and consumption falls to what people actually need, and the engine stalls.

So here is the contradiction. The system makes us richer in the material sense by making us poorer in the mental sense. Its material success depends on manufacturing a dissatisfaction that its material success would otherwise have removed. It cannot let us feel that we have enough, because feeling that we have enough is the one thing that would stop the machine.

This Is Not a Complaint About Greed

The usual version of this argument blames people for wanting too much. That gets it backwards. People do not spontaneously want the new phone. They are told to, by a mechanism that spends more on the telling than on the phone, and the telling works because it was designed by people who studied how to make it work.

Nor is it a complaint about the companies. A firm that declined to advertise would lose to one that did. Each is doing what survival in the system requires. I keep returning to this point because it is the one that makes the problem hard: the behaviour is produced by the structure, not by anyone's character, and so it cannot be fixed by asking anyone to behave better.

It Could Be Balanced

The contradiction does not have to be resolved. It could be balanced, and the tools are not exotic.

Advertising claims could be held to the standard of evidence we apply to other claims, so that "you will be happier" required the same support as "this cures headaches." Schools could teach how manufactured want works, in the same way they teach how a virus works, so that a child recognises the mechanism when it is pointed at them. The volume of advertising in public space could be treated as the pollution it is.

None of this abolishes consumption. It restores some of the balance between the two things the system does: feeding us, and persuading us that we are still hungry. A society could decide to keep the first and dampen the second.

Why It Is Not Balanced

Because the decision would have to be made by a government, and governments represent only one side of this conflict.

The side that wants consumption manufactured is concentrated, funded, organised, and present in every legislature. The side that would rather not be manufactured is everyone, which is to say nobody in particular. I have written about why that contest goes one way, and this is a textbook case. The public's interest in being left alone by advertising is real and widely shared and has no lobby, because nobody's livelihood depends on it.

So the contradiction stands, not because it is unresolvable but because the body that could balance it is structurally on one side. Under a government that represents the business side of the conflict and not the people's side, the contradiction is not a problem to be managed. It is the policy.

Which is why I file this under politics and not economics. The economics is clear enough. What is missing is a decision-maker whose interest lies with the people being told they are hungry, rather than with the people doing the telling.