THE SILENT MASSACRE OF EVERYTHING THAT CANNOT BE MONETISED
Capitalism does not merely destroy forests, rivers, languages, families, villages, rituals, books, cultures, and memories.
Its greater crime is more invisible.
It destroys things before they are even born.
It destroys children who are never conceived because rent is too high, childcare is unaffordable, wages are stagnant, jobs are insecure, and the modern couple must first negotiate with landlords, banks, employers, migration rules, insurance bills, school fees, and debt before they can even think of bringing life into the world.
A child today is not treated as a blessing.
A child is treated as a financial risk.
A second child is treated as extravagance.
A third child is treated as madness.
A large family is treated almost like economic illiteracy.
This is how a civilisation dies: not always through war, famine, or invasion, but through spreadsheets.
The unborn are the first victims of an economic system that turns life itself into a cost centre.
And the destruction does not stop there.
Capitalism has destroyed millions of languages, not by banning them, but by making them useless in the job market.
A grandmother speaks a tribal language. The child replies in English because English gets jobs.
A father sings old folk songs. The son listens to Spotify because algorithms know better than ancestors.
A village dialect survives for a thousand years, then disappears in two generations because no school teaches it, no company hires for it, no government invests in it, and no app monetises it.
The language does not die dramatically.
It dies politely.
It dies when parents stop speaking it to their children.
It dies when children feel ashamed of their accent.
It dies when “career prospects” become more important than ancestral memory.
Irish Gaelic. Scottish Gaelic. Aboriginal languages. Native American languages. Ainu in Japan. Indigenous languages across Africa, India, Latin America, and the Pacific. Thousands of human worlds reduced to footnotes because the market had no use for them.
Every language is a universe.
When a language dies, a way of seeing reality dies with it.
A word for a particular kind of rain disappears.
A proverb about patience disappears.
A song sung at harvest disappears.
A grandmother’s lullaby disappears.
A method of remembering seasons, animals, stars, rivers, grief, love, honour, and death disappears.
And the modern economist looks at the corpse and says:
“Productivity has improved.”
Capitalism does not always burn libraries.
Sometimes it simply stops funding historians.
It does not always execute philosophers.
Sometimes it makes them unemployable.
It does not always destroy artists.
Sometimes it tells them to become content creators.
It does not always ban poets.
Sometimes it gives them an Instagram account and starves them quietly.
Look around.
The historian becomes a niche academic begging for grants.
The philosopher becomes a YouTube clip between ads for protein powder.
The poet becomes a failed influencer.
The classical musician plays in a restaurant while people talk over Bach.
The artisan competes with a factory in Shenzhen.
The village storyteller is replaced by Netflix.
The temple sculptor is replaced by plastic décor.
The handloom weaver is replaced by fast fashion.
The local baker is replaced by a franchise.
The old bookshop is replaced by an Amazon warehouse.
The family farm is replaced by agribusiness.
The town square is replaced by a shopping mall.
The letter is replaced by a notification.
The conversation is replaced by content.
The festival is replaced by a marketing campaign.
The sacred is not destroyed in one blow.
It is first rebranded.
Then packaged.
Then sponsored.
Then sold.
Then emptied.
Then forgotten.
Consider what has happened to food.
Every culture once had its own food memory: slow cooking, seasonal ingredients, grandmother’s hands, family recipes, regional spices, rituals of hospitality.
Now food is increasingly reduced to speed, packaging, delivery, branding, calories, protein count, and Instagram aesthetics.
A traditional dish that took eight hours becomes “too inefficient.”
A family recipe becomes “not scalable.”
A farmer’s market becomes “too expensive.”
A shared meal becomes “content.”
Even hunger is monetised.
Even obesity is monetised.
Even dieting is monetised.
First they sell you sugar.
Then they sell you insulin.
Then they sell you weight-loss injections.
Then they sell you fitness apps.
Then they sell you self-esteem.
This is not civilisation.
This is a snake eating its own tail and charging a subscription fee.
Consider education.
Once, education meant the formation of judgment, character, memory, discipline, taste, and wisdom.
Now it is increasingly reduced to employability.
Students no longer ask, “What is true?”
They ask, “Will this get me a job?”
Universities no longer defend civilisation.
They sell credentials.
The humanities are mocked because they are not immediately monetisable. History, philosophy, literature, classics, anthropology, theology, linguistics, art history: all treated as luxurious ornaments unless they can be converted into corporate training, marketing, policy consulting, or personal branding.
But a civilisation that cannot fund its philosophers will eventually be ruled by accountants of the soul.
A civilisation that cannot preserve its historians will be manipulated by anyone with a slogan.
A civilisation that cannot read poetry will not recognise beauty even when it is dying in front of them.
Consider architecture.
Old cities were built with memory: courtyards, temples, mosques, churches, verandas, carved balconies, town squares, narrow streets, public wells, gardens, libraries, markets, and places where human beings met without buying anything.
Modern cities increasingly look like spreadsheets made of glass.
Apartments without community.
Towers without identity.
Shopping centres without soul.
Airports that look the same everywhere.
Corporate lobbies that look like moral anaesthesia.
Cities used to say: “This is who we are.”
Now they say: “This is what the developer could finance.”
Consider relationships.
Even love has been dragged before the market.
Dating apps turn people into profiles.
Beauty becomes a commodity.
Attention becomes currency.
Marriage becomes risk analysis.
Divorce becomes litigation.
Loneliness becomes a business model.
Therapy apps, dating apps, pornography platforms, self-help courses, luxury gyms, cosmetic clinics, anti-ageing products, personal branding coaches: entire industries now profit from the emotional wreckage produced by a society that has weakened family, community, religion, neighbourhood, and intergenerational obligation.
First the system isolates you.
Then it sells you solutions for loneliness.
First it destroys belonging.
Then it sells you lifestyle.
First it dissolves community.
Then it sells you networking.
First it hollows out the soul.
Then it sells you mindfulness.
Consider children.
Children once grew up among cousins, grandparents, neighbours, festivals, stories, punishments, duties, animals, streets, arguments, kitchens, rituals, and memory.
Now many grow up in apartments, screens, algorithmic entertainment, institutional childcare, exam factories, anxiety, loneliness, processed food, and parents too exhausted by work to transmit anything deeper than survival.
The child is no longer raised by a village.
The child is raised by YouTube, TikTok, school bureaucracy, processed snacks, tired parents, and the cold glow of a tablet.
And then we wonder why attention spans collapse.
We wonder why anxiety rises.
We wonder why birth rates fall.
We wonder why children do not know their grandparents’ stories.
We wonder why teenagers feel rootless.
We wonder why everyone is connected and no one belongs.
This is not a mystery.
It is the predictable result of treating every human relationship as secondary to economic production.
Capitalism’s defenders will say: “But markets created wealth.”
Yes. Obviously.
Markets have produced medicines, technologies, logistics, food abundance, transport, communication, housing materials, and conveniences our ancestors could not imagine.
Only a fool would deny that.
But only a greater fool would confuse wealth with civilisation.
A society can have more GDP and less dignity.
More smartphones and fewer songs.
More data and less wisdom.
More universities and less truth.
More entertainment and less joy.
More productivity and less time.
More options and less commitment.
More travel and less home.
More content and less culture.
More followers and fewer friends.
More therapy and less family.
More sex and less love.
More food and worse health.
More information and less understanding.
More freedom and less meaning.
This is the central sickness of the age:
Everything is available, but almost nothing is inherited.
Everything can be bought, but very little can be belonged to.
Everything can be accessed, but almost nothing is sacred.
The market is a brilliant mechanism for distributing goods.
It is a catastrophic god.
Once money becomes the supreme measurement of value, everything not priced begins to disappear.
The lullaby disappears.
The dialect disappears.
The local theatre disappears.
The handwritten letter disappears.
The old cemetery disappears.
The family recipe disappears.
The village craft disappears.
The temple art disappears.
The public library disappears.
The independent newspaper disappears.
The serious essay disappears.
The unpaid caregiver disappears.
The full-time mother disappears.
The patient teacher disappears.
The monk, the scholar, the historian, the philosopher, the poet, the archivist, the craftsperson, the elder, the local healer, the priest, the storyteller, the keeper of memory: all become economically suspicious.
“What do they produce?”
“What is their market value?”
“How do they scale?”
“How do they monetise?”
“What is the business model?”
These questions are useful in business.
They are poisonous when applied to the whole of life.
Because the most important things in civilisation do not scale neatly.
A mother holding a child at 3 am does not scale.
A grandfather telling a story does not scale.
A dying language does not scale.
A local ritual does not scale.
A serious book may not scale.
A handwritten archive may not scale.
A small farm may not scale.
A cathedral takes centuries.
A civilisation takes millennia.
A market can destroy it in one generation.
We must stop pretending that everything unprofitable is useless.
Some things are too valuable to be left to the market.
Children must not need a business case.
Languages must not need a revenue model.
Culture must not need sponsorship.
History must not need entertainment value.
Philosophy must not need corporate approval.
Art must not need algorithmic engagement.
Elders must not need productivity metrics.
Mothers must not need economic justification.
Local communities must not need scalability.
Beauty must not need monetisation.
A serious civilisation must protect the unprofitable.
Not because the unprofitable is always good.
But because many of the highest goods are unprofitable.
Love is inefficient.
Ritual is inefficient.
Memory is inefficient.
Children are inefficient.
Grandparents are inefficient.
Poetry is inefficient.
Public libraries are inefficient.
Languages with only 5,000 speakers are inefficient.
Old buildings are inefficient.
Festivals are inefficient.
Local crafts are inefficient.
Human beings are inefficient.
That is precisely why they must be defended.
The market can build factories.
It cannot build meaning.
The market can sell books.
It cannot create wisdom.
The market can sell dating subscriptions.
It cannot create love.
The market can sell ancestry tests.
It cannot restore ancestry.
The market can sell meditation apps.
It cannot manufacture peace.
The market can sell cultural festivals.
It cannot resurrect a dead culture.
The market can sell baby products.
It cannot make people brave enough to have children.
The modern world is not poor in things.
It is poor in reasons to live.
And that is the great indictment.
We have built a civilisation where the most sacred question is no longer:
“What is worth preserving?”
It is:
“What can be monetised?”
That question, repeated long enough, becomes a chainsaw.
It cuts down forests.
It sterilises families.
It empties villages.
It kills languages.
It trivialises art.
It humiliates scholars.
It replaces wisdom with content.
It replaces culture with branding.
It replaces community with networking.
It replaces civilisation with consumption.
And when the last language dies, when the last village festival becomes a tourist package, when the last serious historian is replaced by a documentary algorithm, when the last poet becomes a social media strategist, when the last child is not born because the rent is too high, the market will not mourn.
It will simply discover a new opportunity.
Perhaps it will sell us nostalgia.
Perhaps it will sell us heritage experiences.
Perhaps it will sell us artificial wombs.
Perhaps it will sell us AI-generated folk songs in dead languages.
Perhaps it will sell us digital grandparents telling stories no real grandparent lived long enough to pass on.
And we will call it innovation.
A civilisation worthy of the name must say no.
No, not everything is for sale.
No, not everything valuable is profitable.
No, not every tradition is backward.
No, not every inefficiency is waste.
No, not every village must become a market.
No, not every human activity must become content.
No, not every child must be justified by household income.
No, not every language must prove its usefulness to survive.
The economy should serve life.
Life should not crawl on its knees before the economy.
The market should be a tool.
Not a temple.
Not a priesthood.
Not a god.
Because when capitalism becomes god, the altar is always the same:
Children.
Memory.
Culture.
Language.
Beauty.
Truth.
And eventually, the human soul itself.
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