Is Capitalism Designed to Keep Us Trapped?

This is the first article in the "Freedom in Crisis: Navigating Systems from Global to Personal" series, exploring how different layers of systems—from economic to personal—shape our experience of freedom in these uncertain times.

I used to be evangelical about freedom mindset. I believed—with the fervor of someone who'd found religion—that with the right thinking, perspective shifts, and inner work, anyone could transcend the constraints of the system and rise up financially. I taught people how to reframe their relationship with money, recognize abundance, and manifest the reality they wanted. Freedom was primarily a state of mind, and I had the framework to achieve it.

"Change your thinking," I'd say, "and you change your life."

Now, I'm not so sure.

It's not that mindset work doesn't matter or create real shifts for people. It can. I've seen it transform relationships with money, reduce anxiety, and open up new possibilities. But I've begun to notice something more troubling: focusing exclusively on mindset can blind us to the very real systems designed to ensure that most people remain trapped. And those who do experience greater freedom through methods often just end up better adjusted to a fundamentally unjust system—sometimes even spiritually bypassing the structures that keep others confined.

Meanwhile, something even more troubling is happening: as wealth pools at the top, political power follows. Elections increasingly go to the highest bidder. Democracy mutates into oligarchy at best, and authoritarian control at worst. We're watching in real-time as economic inequality transforms into political capture, where those with the most resources essentially write the rules for everyone else.

And what happens to the majority struggling under this system? We're told it's our fault. Think more positively. Work harder. Manifest better. Overcome your scarcity mindset. Align your vibration with prosperity. The system isn't broken, we're told—our thinking and actions are.

But lately, I can't shake a question that keeps me up at night:

What if the system was never meant to free us in the first place?

The Patterns I Can't Unsee

It wasn't one dramatic moment of realization for me, but a creeping suspicion that grew over time. The questions started small and became increasingly insistent. As I traced patterns through history and studied the systems we're immersed in, I couldn't unsee the fundamental constraints built into capitalism itself.

I'm still in the early stages of this exploration, but I've noticed something about our collective attempts to "fix" our relationship with money and markets:

When we pursue "ethical consumption," we still treat social and environmental justice as products to be purchased—accessible primarily to those with disposable income while the most harmful products remain the most affordable.

When we build "conscious businesses," we still find ourselves trapped in growth metrics and market pressures. Even the most ethical company must eventually compromise its values or be outcompeted by those willing to externalize costs.

When we practice "abundance mindset," we often just rebrand colonial ideaologies using new-age spiritual language—manifesting wealth while ignoring that in a system of artificial scarcity, one person's abundance often depends on another's lack.

When we seek "financial freedom," we're usually just trying to reach a position where we personally no longer feel the system's constraints, often by becoming beneficiaries of the same extraction that harms others.

I've tried all of these approaches. I've taught some of them. I've watched how they provide temporary relief for individuals while leaving the underlying machinery untouched.

And I've started wondering: What if these "solutions" are actually safety valves—ways to release just enough pressure that we don't question the system itself? What if they're designed to make us feel like change is happening when really we're just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

"This isn't just abstract theory for me. It's become increasingly personal as I've awakened to these patterns. I notice how mindset work alone doesn't address the fundamental issues when housing becomes unaffordable for entire communities, when healthcare costs bankrupt families doing everything 'right,' when ecological destruction accelerates despite our best individual efforts. There's a profound tension between helping people navigate this system with greater ease and recognizing that navigation itself—no matter how skillful—can't solve the structural problems baked into the design."

The Question Beneath the Question

This isn't about whether capitalism has produced innovation or improved material conditions. It's a deeper question about design and purpose:

Is a system built on endless extraction, commodification, and growth capable of generating genuine freedom and well-being? Or are those outcomes fundamentally at odds with its core design?

I've been circling around this question in one way or another for years (often not even knowing it), watching how even the most well-intentioned efforts to create change within the system end up absorbed by it. How "disruption" becomes the new normal. How "revolution" becomes a marketing slogan.

Look at what's happening today. Big corporations adopt social justice language while union-busting. Tech companies promise liberation through their platforms while harvesting our data and attention. Politicians champion "free markets" while bailing out banks and subsidizing industries that fund their campaigns.

And the costs of this system go far beyond economic inequality. The extreme extraction of late-stage capitalism is causing profound mental, emotional, and physical trauma. Burnout, anxiety, and depression have become normalized features of contemporary life. Meanwhile, the environmental wounds inflicted by profit-driven resource extraction circle back to harm us all—through climate disasters, pollution-related illnesses, and the loss of the very ecosystems we depend on for survival.

The concentration of wealth doesn't just create economic inequality—it undermines the very democratic systems that might otherwise check its power. When billionaires can buy media outlets, fund political campaigns, and shape policy through armies of lobbyists, the line between economic and political power disappears. This is how democracies die—not all at once, but gradually, as economic power translates into political capture.

What if we're trying to build a sanctuary inside a machine that's designed to transform everything—including our efforts at reform—into commodities and extractive opportunities?

The Paradox We're Living

Here's the tension I feel every day, and maybe you do too:

I still use money. I still participate in markets. I still have to function within capitalism to meet my needs and the needs of those I care about. Hell, I even invite you to pay me money on this very blog through subscriptions and donations.

The irony isn't lost on me. I question capitalism while accepting payment through its systems. I critique commodification while, in some ways, commodifying my own thoughts.

At the same time, I'm increasingly convinced that true liberation—both personal and collective—cannot come from getting better at capitalism. It requires creating alternatives to it, even as we use its tools to survive and build what comes next.

This isn't about ideological purity or waiting for some perfect post-capitalist world before taking action. It's not about incapacitating ourselves by flat-out rejecting the only system we currently have. It's about honestly facing the limits of reform, acknowledging our contradictions, and beginning the messy, imperfect work of building something different.

I think about this contradiction every time I check the news. As I write this, we're seeing the predictable results of systems that prioritize profits over people: climate disasters intensifying while fossil fuel companies report record profits; housing becoming a luxury while investors buy up neighborhoods; healthcare costs skyrocketing while insurance companies prosper; democracy itself buckling under the weight of economic power.

These aren't accidental outcomes or examples of capitalism gone wrong. They're features, not bugs—the logical conclusion of a system designed to concentrate wealth and power regardless of human and ecological cost.

Questions That Feel More Honest

Instead of asking, "How can I succeed in capitalism?" I'm learning to ask:

• How can I use money without being used by it?
• How can I meet my needs within the current system while directing my creative energy toward building alternatives?
• What would economic relationships look like if they were designed around regeneration rather than extraction? Around dignity rather than commodification?
• How do we create bridges to cross while the existing structures crumble?
• How do we protect democratic principles when economic power translates so directly into political control?

These questions don't have easy answers. They're not meant to. They're invitations to step outside the boundaries of what we've been taught is possible and practical.

What I've found is that simply asking these questions—allowing ourselves to question capitalism's inevitability—creates space for imagination that wasn't there before. It's like taking off glasses we didn't know we were wearing and seeing the world differently.

Seeds of Something Different

I'm not offering a blueprint for what comes next. I'm not even sure blueprints are the right approach for the emergent, living systems we need.

What I am seeing are experiments worth watching and participating in:

Communities creating their own exchange systems based on reciprocity rather than profit. Networks of mutual aid that operate beyond market logic. Cooperative enterprises that prioritize member wellbeing over growth. Commons governance that protects what should never be commodified. Democracy reforms that reduce the influence of money in politics.

These aren't perfect. They're messy, human-scale attempts to create something different. They often use money when necessary while steadily reducing its power to shape relationships and determine value.

What interests me isn't their utopian promise but their practical experimentation with different premises about what an economy is for and how it might operate.

These aren't just nice alternatives that exist alongside capitalism—they're seeds of fundamentally different ways of organizing our economic relationships. They matter not just economically but politically, as they rebuild the democratic muscle that atrophies when we reduce citizenship to consumption.

The Both/And of Where We Are

The question I'm sitting with isn't about escaping capitalism through individual cleverness or waiting for its total collapse before taking action.

It's about how we might live in the both/and space of our current reality:

• Using the system when we must while refusing to be defined by it.
• Meeting our needs within capitalism while redirecting our creative energy toward what comes next.
• Acknowledging the ways we're entangled in extraction while steadily disentangling ourselves.
• Recognizing how economic power undermines democracy while fighting to rebuild democratic institutions.

This isn't hypocrisy. It's the necessary tension of living between worlds—of using what's available while building what's needed.

I think of it like crossing a river by stepping from stone to stone. We can't simply leap from one bank to the other—we need to create and find stepping stones along the way. Sometimes we need to go back to gather others. Sometimes we need to rest. But we're always moving toward the other shore, even when the path isn't straightforward.

Breaking the Spell

Perhaps the most revolutionary act right now isn't finding a perfect solution but breaking the spell that makes the current system appear inevitable.

The idea that capitalism represents some natural economic order is itself a myth that serves those who benefit most from the current arrangement. In reality, it's a relatively recent historical development—one that can be replaced with systems better suited to human flourishing and planetary health.

Imagine economic relationships designed around fundamentally different values: regeneration instead of extraction, sufficiency instead of endless growth, cooperation instead of competition, care instead of commodification. These aren't utopian fantasies but practical possibilities already emerging in communities creating alternatives.

We might need to stop trying to reform what's fundamentally broken. Perhaps the energy spent trying to make capitalism "more ethical" or "more sustainable" could be better directed toward growing the seeds of what might replace it—systems that strengthen democracy rather than undermining it, that heal ecological wounds rather than creating them.

I don't have all the answers. But I'm increasingly convinced that questioning capitalism's inevitability and exploring alternatives together is how we begin to find our way toward whatever comes next.

What if the path forward involves both using money differently and creating systems beyond it? What if true freedom requires us to navigate the tension between surviving within capitalism and building alternatives to it?

These questions open onto an even more urgent one that I'll explore in the next piece of this series: Can Personal Liberty Survive When Democracy Collapses? As economic systems strain, political systems face their own crisis - one that threatens the very foundations of individual liberty. Join me as we examine how democratic erosion impacts our personal freedom, what happens when wealth concentration undermines political equality, and what we might do in response.

Until then, I'd love to hear: How are you navigating the tension between using money and not being used by it? What questions are you sitting with about our economic system? How are you experiencing the connection between economic power and democratic decline in your own community? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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