A reader wrote in this week to challenge a recent column of mine about Gen Z and their spending habits. Essentially, aggregated Bank of America credit card data shows this supposedly deeply anti-capitalist generation is very fond of consumer capitalism. But is that really hypocrisy?
“A worker can oppose capitalism while still being forced to sell labor and buy necessities,” the reader wrote to me, “just as a prisoner can oppose incarceration while remaining confined.” Buying a secondhand jacket or a $5 treat—or waiting on a long line in a bout of “democratized snobbery” or “conspicuous waiting”—doesn’t abolish wages, rent, debt, or the fact someone else owns the means of production. It just changes how a person survives inside a system they have no way to leave.
