"Capitalism has convinced you that you NEED things you don't actually need. Have you ever heard of marketing, of which the goal is exactly to convince people that they need something?"
Capitalism is an impersonal emergent system based on the actions of free people voluntarily interacting it has not capacity to convince anyone of anything.
Yes, and sometimes it works but it does not work by force. Giving in and adopting the message of the advertising is still a voluntary choice. People who make this complaint are essentially trying to say it isn't voluntary because other people make choices they don't like so they go through all kinds of hoops inventing concepts like false consciousness and brainwashing (which has been shown to not actually work) to explain away peoples agency and make it look like people are slaves to corporations somehow.
To be fair, saying again and again it's voluntary doesn't make it right. "Voluntarism" doesn't mean shit. People join cults or kill themselves "voluntarily." Nobody ever does anything ever without first wanting to do it. Only death is involuntary when its murder.
We may argue that these are very old references, but let this sink in--it takes that many years of consistent and persistent seed-sowing and nurturing for trees to bear fruit, which they are doing now, in the 21st century. Capitalism is thriving because it is the only way to feed the monster of consumerism. And that is a monster we created, because we wanted capitalism to be successful. So please spare us all this talk about how there is no coercion involved and it is all voluntary. Our minds are so brainwashed in consumerist propaganda that we are led to think that wanting to consume more and more and more, is voluntary. Volition is the effect. What is the root cause?
This should tell you a thing or two about how "voluntary" consumerism has become our way of life today. This happened by design, not by accident. The method used to make consumerism part of our lifestyle, culture and in fact--our value system--was propaganda. Sounds familiar? For more on this technique, read the book by Edward Bernays. Modern capitalism and voluntarism aren't even close to the same thing. That's unbelievably myopic.
