It is no secret that we are in an age of abundance in America. Market capitalism, industrialization, and globalization have reshaped our economy into a wealth generation machine. Even the poorest among us have luxuries that would be coveted by the most powerful figures in our not-so-distant past. While inequalities persist, the fact is that the crushing poverty most of humanity has wallowed in throughout time has largely been eradicated in the West.

This has undoubtedly improved the material living conditions for most Americans, but the resulting increase in comfort and consumerism has led to a decline across the intellectual, spiritual, and physical life areas. Just look at the lifestyle and behavior of the average American: mindlessly scrolling through addictive digital apps serving lowbrow content, buying poorly-made goods that wear out or break after a short period of time, becoming obese and sick from eating highly-processed, non-nutritious food, incurring unsustainable debt to fund vacations and purchases, and so on.

People have large surpluses of time and attention, which corporations harvest for advertising revenue. Dark patterns and algorithms design to serve highly variable rewards ensure you remain addicted to digital apps that keep you from doing more spiritually and intellectual fulfilling tasks while enriching the technocratic upper class.

People aren’t starving anymore; they are becoming obese. Of course, market capitalism has a solution for that: a weight loss industry of medications, plastic surgeons, personal trainers, gym memberships, etc.

People have the things they need, but those things fall apart and don’t last long. According to market capitalism, this is a feature, not a bug. Consumers are expected to upgrade to the latest version, fashion, or innovation lest they be left behind.

People can buy anything they desire, so long as they have the credit for it. Debt fuels the market capitalism machine, both corporate and personal. When it all spirals out of control, the government steps in to bail out parties with sufficient lobbying power.

This is not what a healthy society looks like. This is not the future we were promised. This is a dystopia, and given that proponents of market capitalism laud this as progress, we can surmise that it will only get worse.

So, what should we do about it?

Austerity.