Everything Is Capitalism Until It Is No More
Essay on Hypernormalizing a System Everyone Knows Is Broken
Though I once believed, at some level, that the system we live in was going to fall, I only recently understood that its collapse is inevitable. I graduated from university ten years ago and landed a job at a company that felt perfect indeed. We had lunch boxes, pizza parties, a gym, medical insurance, a foosball table in the hallway, and even a barista. It was a gamedev company whose slogan was "We love making games," and I truly believed in it at first. Until I realized that its real slogan should have been "We love making money."
Don't get me wrong, I still have warm feelings towards that workplace. Those were my wonderful years. And the issue is not with that particular company. The issue is with the system as a whole. Because this happens to any company who determines its goal as growth for the sake of growth.
So, on one hand there is this free-to-play model which is entirely designed to pump out more and more money out of people who just want to unwind, and on the other hand there are employees who are expected not only to execute this model in a very profitable way, but to do it with unshakable faith that they are actually making the world better. This all-encompassing lie inevitably creates a bubble, whose only true destiny is to collapse.
And I think that when on the rise of the capitalistic system people could really feel motivated because of the opportunity to get things they never had. And maybe at some point in history that fairytale of "work hard and you can achieve anything" was even true. But as of today we can only see how every single one of us is tired. Byung-Chun Han perfectly put it in his theory:
Don't get me wrong, I still have warm feelings towards that workplace. Those were my wonderful years. And the issue is not with that particular company. The issue is with the system as a whole. Because this happens to any company who determines its goal as growth for the sake of growth.
So, on one hand there is this free-to-play model which is entirely designed to pump out more and more money out of people who just want to unwind, and on the other hand there are employees who are expected not only to execute this model in a very profitable way, but to do it with unshakable faith that they are actually making the world better. This all-encompassing lie inevitably creates a bubble, whose only true destiny is to collapse.
And I think that when on the rise of the capitalistic system people could really feel motivated because of the opportunity to get things they never had. And maybe at some point in history that fairytale of "work hard and you can achieve anything" was even true. But as of today we can only see how every single one of us is tired. Byung-Chun Han perfectly put it in his theory:
Imagine being hired to publicize or package a product in order to seduce people into buying it - even if personally one doesn't care about the product or even hates the very idea of it. One has to engage creativity quite intensely, trying to figure out original solutions, and such an effort can be much more exhausting than repetitive assembly line work.
At my old gamedev job, no one would have admitted that what we were really making wasn’t “fun” or “community” or even entertainment. We were making desire. Our task wasn’t just to design games but to keep people hooked. Not because the stories were profound or the mechanics groundbreaking, but because every system was fine-tuned to ensure players came back and spent a little more money. And to do that, we had to believe. Or at least, act like we did.
There was a time when work was simply a means to an end. A transaction - labor for wages. Now, it is supposed to be an identity, a passion, a purpose. It is not enough to simply do your job. You must love it, you must believe in it, must perform enthusiasm for it, even if you feel that it's absurd. And if you don't do that - then probably you're not a great fit for this company, you know. It is strange to think about how much one thing has changed. People used to dream of better jobs. Now, they dream of not having one at all. We joke about escaping to the woods, buying a cabin, living off the grid. The absurdity of that fantasy tells you everything about where we are: we don’t dream of success - we dream of escape.
Our exhaustion is different from that of past generations. It is not the exhaustion of a factory worker after a twelve-hour shift, nor that of a farmer tending the fields from sunrise to sundown. Those forms of labor, as grueling as they were, had something that ours does not: an ending. When the shift was over, it was over. Now, there is no “off.” Work follows us home, bleeds into our weekends, pings us with late-night Slack messages and “urgent” emails. There is always more to optimize, more to produce and more to maintain. Even outside of work, we are expected to become our own personal brand - we should be curating, networking and monetizing on every moment - and if you are not doing that - you are falling behind.
And this, I think, is why burnout feels different now - you could work forever and still never be enough. No matter how much you do, there is always someone doing more, always a new skill to acquire, always another side hustle you should be pursuing. And at the center of it all is the most absurd part: none of this was ever for us.
The profits do not go to us. The rewards are an illusion, dangled just out of reach. And yet, the system convinces us to keep running and striving. We are too exhausted to imagine anything else.
There is that kind of tiredness that comes before a breakdown. Only what comes next remains a mystery. For our generation it was the only system we witnessed and the only one we knew. But so was for the ones who lived under feudalism, and who witnessed the rule of the pharaohs, emperors and kings. Every system has its beginning and its end. So what happens when exhaustion turns into disillusionment?
In his book "Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More" a Russian-American anthropologist Alexei Yurchak studied the final years of the Soviet Union, exploring how a system can continue functioning even after it has lost its meaning. One of his most important concepts is that official Soviet ideology became a hollow performance — everyone was acting as though the system still made sense, even when it was clear that it didn’t. There was no singular moment when people decided that the USSR was over. It just became increasingly clear that the old structures weren’t working.
Yurchak describes how the Soviet government, institutions, and even citizens themselves maintained the illusion of stability, but beneath the surface, things were already falling apart. The phrase “everything was forever, until it was no more” captures this eerie reality: it seemed impossible to imagine a world without the Soviet Union, until suddenly, it was gone.
Same with capitalism. We still wake up, go to work, scroll through endless algorythmic feeds, buy subscriptions. We still hear politicians debate tax cuts, interest rates, economic growth, as though these things will continue to matter indefinitely. Even those who criticize capitalism often do so from within its framework, proposing solutions that ultimately preserve the system - never quite asking whether the whole structure itself is beyond saving. But what if we are already living in capitalism’s final act? What if this is what a slow collapse looks like - not riots in the streets or a single dramatic revolution, but something more banal? A gradual erosion of faith. A system that continues, not because people believe in it, but because they don’t know how to stop performing it.
Maybe we are already at the point where participation has become a hollow ritual. Where companies still chase infinite growth, even as consumers have less to spend. Where workers still strive for promotions that don’t come, still apply for jobs that don’t pay enough, still put their trust in career paths that lead nowhere. The illusion holds, because we have not yet reached the moment where we collectively recognize that it is over.
But the unshaken faith of previous generations is gone. No one really believes in the promise anymore. And no one expects to retire comfortably, or buy a home, or build a life that feels secure. There is only this endless scramble to stay afloat. Fewer and fewer people think they can win this game.
And so we are left with a question: how long can a system persist once the belief in it has disappeared?
It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. But then again, for decades, no one could imagine the Soviet Union disappearing either. And yet, it did. Not with a single moment of collapse, but with a long, slow unraveling - until suddenly, it was gone.
There was a time when work was simply a means to an end. A transaction - labor for wages. Now, it is supposed to be an identity, a passion, a purpose. It is not enough to simply do your job. You must love it, you must believe in it, must perform enthusiasm for it, even if you feel that it's absurd. And if you don't do that - then probably you're not a great fit for this company, you know. It is strange to think about how much one thing has changed. People used to dream of better jobs. Now, they dream of not having one at all. We joke about escaping to the woods, buying a cabin, living off the grid. The absurdity of that fantasy tells you everything about where we are: we don’t dream of success - we dream of escape.
Our exhaustion is different from that of past generations. It is not the exhaustion of a factory worker after a twelve-hour shift, nor that of a farmer tending the fields from sunrise to sundown. Those forms of labor, as grueling as they were, had something that ours does not: an ending. When the shift was over, it was over. Now, there is no “off.” Work follows us home, bleeds into our weekends, pings us with late-night Slack messages and “urgent” emails. There is always more to optimize, more to produce and more to maintain. Even outside of work, we are expected to become our own personal brand - we should be curating, networking and monetizing on every moment - and if you are not doing that - you are falling behind.
And this, I think, is why burnout feels different now - you could work forever and still never be enough. No matter how much you do, there is always someone doing more, always a new skill to acquire, always another side hustle you should be pursuing. And at the center of it all is the most absurd part: none of this was ever for us.
The profits do not go to us. The rewards are an illusion, dangled just out of reach. And yet, the system convinces us to keep running and striving. We are too exhausted to imagine anything else.
There is that kind of tiredness that comes before a breakdown. Only what comes next remains a mystery. For our generation it was the only system we witnessed and the only one we knew. But so was for the ones who lived under feudalism, and who witnessed the rule of the pharaohs, emperors and kings. Every system has its beginning and its end. So what happens when exhaustion turns into disillusionment?
In his book "Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More" a Russian-American anthropologist Alexei Yurchak studied the final years of the Soviet Union, exploring how a system can continue functioning even after it has lost its meaning. One of his most important concepts is that official Soviet ideology became a hollow performance — everyone was acting as though the system still made sense, even when it was clear that it didn’t. There was no singular moment when people decided that the USSR was over. It just became increasingly clear that the old structures weren’t working.
Yurchak describes how the Soviet government, institutions, and even citizens themselves maintained the illusion of stability, but beneath the surface, things were already falling apart. The phrase “everything was forever, until it was no more” captures this eerie reality: it seemed impossible to imagine a world without the Soviet Union, until suddenly, it was gone.
Same with capitalism. We still wake up, go to work, scroll through endless algorythmic feeds, buy subscriptions. We still hear politicians debate tax cuts, interest rates, economic growth, as though these things will continue to matter indefinitely. Even those who criticize capitalism often do so from within its framework, proposing solutions that ultimately preserve the system - never quite asking whether the whole structure itself is beyond saving. But what if we are already living in capitalism’s final act? What if this is what a slow collapse looks like - not riots in the streets or a single dramatic revolution, but something more banal? A gradual erosion of faith. A system that continues, not because people believe in it, but because they don’t know how to stop performing it.
Maybe we are already at the point where participation has become a hollow ritual. Where companies still chase infinite growth, even as consumers have less to spend. Where workers still strive for promotions that don’t come, still apply for jobs that don’t pay enough, still put their trust in career paths that lead nowhere. The illusion holds, because we have not yet reached the moment where we collectively recognize that it is over.
But the unshaken faith of previous generations is gone. No one really believes in the promise anymore. And no one expects to retire comfortably, or buy a home, or build a life that feels secure. There is only this endless scramble to stay afloat. Fewer and fewer people think they can win this game.
And so we are left with a question: how long can a system persist once the belief in it has disappeared?
It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. But then again, for decades, no one could imagine the Soviet Union disappearing either. And yet, it did. Not with a single moment of collapse, but with a long, slow unraveling - until suddenly, it was gone.
