Yes, dead on accurate.

This is precisely where I’ve arrived at in my life. After working in corporate America for ~4 years I’m disgusted, I feel like a horrible person who’s contributing to the disgusting values that bring about the worst in all of us. Businesses chase profit without a single care in the world beyond more profit. The reality is that businesses would use child labor if the consumers wouldn’t boycott that decision. As consumers we are their only checks and balances that exist.

The sad thing though is that I keep saying “businesses” do this and “businesses” do that, but it’s individuals making decisions that make up these “businesses”. These individuals are scum, they truly are. Yet, they get by with it and peacefully sleep at night because they are operating as a cog in a wheel, this is their excuse and the excuse that we somehow allow.

Profitability in and of itself is just another way of saying how much a company can screw over their lower level employees and the paying public. That is all it is, and that is all they care about. A company like Apple is making 40% margin or something crazy, that’s asinine. The crazier thing, we’re not their end target. The middle men, i.e. retailers, that they go through also make 20–30% margin. Do the math and you will see that everything we purchase is marked up so insanely high that is the collective we that is lining the pockets of the wealthiest individuals in this world and it is the collective we that could stop doing so if we could get together and take a stand. Sadly, we can’t. People are in a trance, they “need” their iPhone’s, they “need” to be consumers because that is what drives our entire lives, and it’s pathetic — and for the record I’m lumping myself into this class because I’m not above it, I do the same thing even when I consciously wish I weren’t, because I’m too weak to just stop altogether.

So as long as Capitalism controls our actions and thoughts this kind of demeaning of human life, and some more than others (i.e. those with more purchasing power will always have it a bit better than everyone else), will continue to happen. Only we, as consumers, can break the cycle.