It’s a common caricature that rejecting capitalism means we have to abandon modern life entirely. We’re supposed to believe that wanting to overthrow capitalism means living in the wilderness, eating beans, and feeling guilty about every purchase. But that’s not the point. We can hate the system while still surviving within it.

It starts with the things we own. Because most online platforms offer free repair tutorials, we can learn basic repair skills; planned obsolescence succeeds when we feel helpless. We can start with simple fixes: sewing buttons, patching holes, replacing phone screens, unclogging drains. A basic toolkit and the willingness to try can save us thousands annually while undermining throwaway culture. Repair Cafés operate across Australia, teaching skills for free and building community simultaneously.

This same principle applies to our digital lives. The idea that services are “free” is a myth; we pay with our attention and our data, which are packaged and sold. We can use ad blockers to deny corporations our attention, choose Signal over WhatsApp, Firefox over Chrome. Every open-source alternative is a small rejection of surveillance capitalism that tracks and monetises our every move. VPNs, encrypted messaging, and privacy-focused tools are basic digital self-defence. Our data is worth billions to tech companies; we don’t have to give it away for convenience.

And then there’s the larger architecture of debt that shapes our choices. The average new car loan now exceeds $30,000 with terms stretching to seven years, plus insurance, fuel, maintenance, and depreciation. That’s a mobile debt prison that depreciates 20% the moment we drive away. Bikes, car shares, and public transport might be less convenient, but they don’t chain us to monthly payments. If we must drive, buying used and learning basic maintenance is a blow to the debt-industrial complex.

This logic becomes clear in our working lives. The relationship is fundamentally economic, no matter how friendly the owners may be. Wages have stagnated while productivity has soared, and the difference is the surplus value extracted from our labour. It’s not personal; it’s just how the capitalist economy works. In Australia, CEO pay has increased dramatically over the past decade while real wages have stagnated. The most progressive CEO in the world still has to answer to shareholders, and shareholders demand profit above all else.

This starts with setting boundaries and not working beyond our contracted hours, because that isn’t laziness—it’s personal responsibility. We can do good work within those boundaries, sure, but staying late out of guilt is voluntary exploitation. Studies consistently show that overwork doesn’t lead to promotions; it leads to more overwork. Women do significantly more unpaid emotional labour in workplaces while being promoted less frequently.

When looking for a job, it’s worth keeping in mind that postings using terms like “ninja,” “rock star,” or “family” often signal an attempt to get more work for less pay. They want us to believe that accepting below-market wages shows passion, but all it shows is that their business model depends on hyperexploitation. We can name our price and ask for more than we think we’re worth, because we probably are. The gender pay gap in Australia still sits at around 12% and by no accident.

We don’t have to turn down promotions just to escape feeling guilty. However, if we do get promoted to management, we shouldn’t become the kind of manager we hate. We can use whatever power we have to make life easier for people below us. We can push back against unrealistic deadlines, fight for better pay for our team, and shield them from corporate nonsense when we can. Middle managers who remember where they came from can do real damage to toxic systems. Even small acts of solidarity in management can ripple outward in ways we might not expect.

We also shouldn’t feel guilty about using what we’re entitled to. Sick days are part of our compensation, not a favour. Australians, for instance, often have a lot of paid leave that they don’t end up taking. And if our company offers professional development funds, training budgets, or any other benefits, we should use them. We’re made to feel as though these are gifts from benevolent employers, but they’re part of our compensation package we’ve already earned.

Work shouldn’t be our identities, so we can resist the colonisation of our sense of self. When people ask what we do, we can try answering with our hobbies instead of our job title. “What do you do?” often means “What is your job?” This reveals how capitalism influences our social interactions. Our worth isn’t determined by our productivity, and our paycheck isn’t a measure of our value as people. We are not our jobs, despite what LinkedIn influencers want us to believe.

We should stop feeling loyal to companies that would replace us tomorrow if it improved their quarterly numbers. Major Australian companies laid off thousands during COVID while accepting billions in government support, then posted record profits. Woolworths and Coles control 65% of our grocery market while their workers struggle to afford the food they’re selling. The “we’re a family” rhetoric evaporates the moment it conflicts with profit margins.

Similarly, landlords are also not our friends, no matter how friendly they seem. They’re treating our basic need for shelter as an investment vehicle, extracting wealth from our necessity. In Australia, negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts cost billions annually while first-home buyers are priced out entirely. Over 30% of Australian households rent, and Indigenous Australians face housing stress at three times the rate of non-Indigenous people.

We also need to know our tenant rights because landlords count on our ignorance. We should document everything with photos, emails, and dates—we can’t let them gaslight us into thinking their negligence is our fault. The housing crisis is the predictable result of treating homes as commodities instead of human rights.

If we’re lucky enough to buy, we should resist the pressure to see our home as an investment first and shelter second. The mortgage industry wants us house-poor because debt makes us compliant and desperate. The “Australian dream” of homeownership has become a nightmare of 30-year mortgages that assume nothing will ever go wrong. Banks profit from our anxiety about interest rates while property developers land-bank to keep prices high. Our homes should be where we live.

Even in countries like Australia with public healthcare, the capitalist system can lead to a form of violence that’s masked as care. Despite Medicare, Australians spend billions out-of-pocket each year on health costs. Private health insurance companies profit from creating a two-tier system where wealth determines health outcomes. People with disabilities face thousands in additional annual costs just to achieve the same living standard as non-disabled people. The NDIS, while crucial, faces constant attacks from governments more concerned with budgets than human dignity.

What’s more, generic medications work the same as brand names—the Therapeutic Goods Administration legally requires it. Yet pharmaceutical marketing convinces us otherwise through sophisticated manipulation. If our doctor insists on brand names without medical justification, we can ask why—sometimes they don’t realise they’re being influenced.

All in all, debt isn’t a moral failing—it’s a systemic feature designed to discipline workers. Australian student debt has reached tens of billions, not because education is expensive to provide, but because we’ve decided to treat learning as a luxury commodity. The same degrees that were free for boomers now saddle younger generations with decades of repayments. International students pay even more, subsidising domestic education while being scapegoated for housing shortages.

Capitalism trains us to be consumers first and humans second through relentless manipulation. Every advertisement exploits carefully researched insecurities to sell solutions to problems they created. Social media amplifies this by turning everyone’s curated highlight reel into a baseline for normal. Before buying something, we can ask:

Are we solving a real problem or filling an emotional void?

No amount of buying things can repair the damage capitalism inflicts on our sense of community, purpose, and genuine connection.

We can also ditch the big companies and their loyalty programs. They pour millions into these schemes, not out of generosity, but because keeping existing customers is cheaper than finding new ones. Those reward points are tracking our purchases and selling our data while giving us cents on the dollar back. We can shop ruthlessly, use competitors’ offers against each other, take every introductory deal and switch when it expires.

Social media platforms profit from our social needs while actively undermining actual community. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok—they’re all designed to maximise engagement through outrage and addiction, not connection. Meta made over $100 billion in advertising revenue by selling our attention and data. We can use these platforms strategically if we must, but we should remember they’re hostile territory designed to isolate us while claiming to connect us.

We tend to overthink and worry constantly. There’s no use stressing over recycling, because blaming individuals for these large-scale issues isn’t effective. Less than 10% of plastic ever produced has been successfully recycled—the rest is burned, buried, or floating in the ocean. That carefully sorted recycling often ends up in landfill because recycling is only profitable for specific materials in specific conditions. The recycling symbol on plastics was designed by the plastics industry to shift responsibility from producers to consumers. Our individual recycling efforts are negligible compared to industrial waste—one container ship produces emissions equivalent to millions of cars.

We need to build collective power before we need it, because isolation enables exploitation. We can start group chats with neighbours, share tools and skills, create childcare co-ops, and form buying groups. We can start community gardens on unused land, time banks where people trade skills, and mutual aid networks. When capitalism inevitably fails our neighbour, these networks become lifelines. We don’t need to be so alone and desperate.

Australian mining companies destroy communities from Papua New Guinea to Peru while we’re distracted by domestic culture wars. Our superannuation funds invest in fossil fuels and weapons manufacturers while preaching ethical investment. The exploitation we experience here is mild compared to what Australian capital inflicts. Solidarity means understanding these connections and fighting the system that oppresses workers everywhere. Our liberation is bound up with theirs.

Nevertheless, the emotional toll of capitalism is real. Capitalism gaslights us into thinking systemic failures are personal ones, that poverty is a character flaw rather than policy choice. Our anxiety isn’t a personal failing; it’s a logical reaction to a system designed to be unstable. Depression rates correlate directly with financial stress, not because poor people are weak, but because poverty is trauma. We can process the rage we feel, but channel it into action, not despair.

Achieving individual perfection isn’t the point within capitalism, as it’s inherently designed to prevent that. Instead, the objective is to collectively survive with dignity, while simultaneously working to create alternatives to this flawed system. Individual solutions won’t save us from systemic problems, but collective action might transform them entirely. We have to stop letting capitalism convince us that its failures are our personal shortcomings. We’re not the problem.

We already have everything we need to build a different world: the resources, knowledge, and tools. The question isn’t whether change is possible, but whether we’ll organise to make it happen. Every act of resistance, every network of support, every refusal to comply adds up. The system seems invincible until suddenly it isn’t.

We can start where we are, with what we have, alongside whoever shows up.