There are three lies that capitalism tells to perpetuate itself.

• We're all temporarily embarassed billionaires.
• The free market will work things out.
• And there's nothing you can do about it.

We're all temporarily embarassed billionaires.

You too--with hardwork, grit, and a little luck--can become one of the capitalist class. One day, if you give just a little more, you can sit back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor. That's why you must never regulate, or else inconvenience, the current rich from being able to extract money or labor from people actually doing the work.

To see through this lie, look around: If they wanted you to succeed like them, they'd make it easy. They'd offer free childcare. They'd offer top-class education and they'd offer it for free. They'd let you work from home and shorten your commutes. They wouldn't tie your health care--and therefore your health-- to your employment. At every instance the capitalist class wants you shackled to doing your work for them. As labor, you're exploitable. As a fellow, you're a threat.

The free market will work things out.

Coordinating resources is hard. Individual actors striving for success will outperform any attempt to design the system. Regulations are more likely to ruin things than fix them. Survival of the fittest is cruel, but it'll work out in the end.

But the exceptions to this are well documented. What would you pay to live? Anything, right? Then the second your health falters, the free market will take everything from you. Would you care for your parents or your children or the sick or the elderly? Then the free market will pay you nothing for it, because you'll do it anyways. Do you like to make music or art? Is someone paying you to do it? No? Then no one will. Then to the free market, that's what it's worth: nothing at all.

And there's nothing you can do about it.

Capitalism sucks, but it's as inevitable as the sea and the sun. If you don't want to participate--if you want to hold on to your morals, do anything other than chase sweet, sweet profit--well, then someone else will. And they'll get rich, and leave you behind. Power begets power, and there's no way to unseat the rich once they've taken their thrones.

There are less of them than you think there are. By definition, they need us more than we need them.

And they're only human, too.