Dear Capitalism,
I’m writing this letter to express the utmost gratitude I have for you. Words cannot capture how much you shape my life every day. From the little moments, like watching my go-to boba order cost $7.10 when the same order used to cost $5.65 three years ago, to the bigger things like when you denied my healthcare coverage for mental health services because it wasn’t considered necessary, you have truly never failed to show up in my life consistently. Your dependability is one of a kind.
I’ve moved across the country, studied abroad and traveled internationally. Somehow, no matter where I go, you’re always there — just as reliable as ever.
I’m so grateful for the opportunity to watch my career goal of becoming a professor of social science shrink and become borderline unachievable, all because universities are maximizing profit by hiring fewer tenured professors. The social sciences, which I argue are incredibly important if we value constructing a fair society, have been gutted. Meanwhile, areas of research, such as AI, that are heavily linked to the private sector have seen their funding explode.
Thank you, Capitalism, for always valuing money over humanity.
Average rent prices have risen from about $300 per month 40 years ago to over $2,000 per month today.
Making millions of people feel as if they aren’t successful enough because they can’t afford to spend half their paycheck alone on rent is one of the things I admire most about you.
Nothing beats the countless times I’ve been told that majoring in the social sciences without immediately monetizing it through law school afterward is a waste of time and money, even though learning about the world is what brings me fulfillment.
Your ability to enslave academia to you is unmatched!
My quarterly parking pass in my apartment complex went from $305 to $365 in just three years. That is a 20% increase — when there was never a shortage of parking spaces to begin with.
I absolutely adore how much you’ve normalized greed in our homes!
It’s incredible how dozens of unhoused people are mocked or blamed for their difficulties, all due to the normalization of individualism in our society. If someone doesn’t make it, it is automatically their fault, even if they were dealt a bad hand of cards to start with.
I am grateful to you, Capitalism, for normalizing victim-shaming.
I admire how much you care about the health of the American people. Food corporations lobby our government officials to keep cancer-causing ingredients in our foods, just so the corporation can keep its production costs low and maximize its profits at the expense of our health.
I never knew how much I needed to see corporate interests valued over the health of the people in my life until I met you. Your charm is truly intoxicating.
If I broke the New University word limit and named every capitalist facet of our society that I was grateful for, this letter would be so long that Jeff Bezos would make $1.4 million by the time you finished reading it. Oh, wait, Bezos already made that much while you’ve been reading this letter, even with the New University word limit.
$1.4 million would change my life. I wouldn’t have to cap myself at $50 every time I put gas in my car, which doesn’t even fill my tank because gas is six dollars per gallon ever since President Donald Trump bombed Iran.
I truly appreciate every little way you’ve sown greed into the lives of Americans and defined success as monetary rather than happiness. Your beauty, especially in late-stage capitalism where the level of wealth of the rich is inconceivable to the average American, has captivated me entirely.
My life is dedicated to you. Not out of loyalty, but because I, like everyone else, don’t have any other option. Many non-capitalist societies that have emerged have been sabotaged by American intervention.
Your effort, love and care have infiltrated so much of our government that you’ve somehow convinced the people that funding universal healthcare or affordable education will always be too expensive, but funding $16.5 billion to bomb other countries is totally doable.
Anything to keep the top 1% wealthy and the rest struggling.
In a world full of uncertainty, it’s comforting to know that it will never change.
Cheers to many more years of injustice, worsening wealth gaps, ignoring the climate crisis because it would hurt corporate profits, blaming the individual instead of the broken system and teaching people not to care about others if they are struggling.
Sincerely,
Every college student who is just trying to live a simple life.
Alexander Randall is an Opinion Staff Writer. He can be reached at arandal1@uci.edu.
Edited by Charleen Pan
