In our Deep Dive last week, we took a look at the main reason why America is falling apart: an economic system that puts profit before everything else—capitalism.
The response was so overwhelmingly positive that we’re expanding the article into a four-part series:
In part one, we exposed capitalism's fundamental flaw: prioritizing profit above all else.
This week, we'll examine capitalism's most pernicious lie—that capitalism is the ultimate freedom. Spoiler alert: the opposite is true.
Next week, we'll explore what life after capitalism could look like—and no, it doesn't mean ending money or private property.
Finally, we'll outline how to win that better world.
Together, these four articles will pull back the curtain on a system that's sold us a fantasy—and show that something better isn’t just possible, it’s necessary.
Deep Dives are usually just for our members.
Every Sunday, our paying members get exclusive Deep Dives that connect the dots behind the headlines. But more than that—they’re the reason we can keep producing uncompromising, anti-capitalist journalism without corporate gatekeepers.
But this week, it’s totally free. We believe this message is too important to keep behind a paywall—but we still need your support. Consider becoming a NOTICE News member today.
😡 A dangerous lie
The most dangerous lie Americans are taught is that capitalism equals freedom.
We’re told that workers can simply quit bad jobs, consumers can shop elsewhere, and the market will reward good behavior while punishing bad actors.
This myth of choice has convinced millions that they live in the freest system ever created—but the reality is far different.
THE TRUTH: Capitalism doesn’t create freedom—it creates a sophisticated form of bondage that traps workers.
It’s a system designed to extract as much profit as possible while keeping workers desperate enough to accept whatever terms their employers offer.
ZOOM OUT: Milton Friedman, the architect of modern free-market thinking, famously wrote:
“When you enter a store, no one forces you to buy. You are free to do so or go elsewhere. That is the basic difference between the market and a political agency. You are free to choose.”
This logic extends to employment. According to this view, workers freely choose their jobs, negotiate their wages, and can leave anytime they want.
The market, Friedman argued, ensures the best outcomes for everyone through voluntary transactions between free agents.
BUT BUT BUT: There’s one question that absolutely destroys this entire framework.
Is a decision made under the threat of starvation, homelessness, and death really a free choice?
When you need a job to survive, when your children’s future depends on your paycheck, when losing health insurance that’s tied to your job means potentially dying from treatable diseases—how free are you, really?
The gun pointed at your head may be invisible, but it’s no less real than the overseer’s whip.
⛓️ How people are enslaved
To understand why capitalism is slavery, consider what happens when you decide to change jobs.
You risk losing your health insurance—often for months.
You might lose your home if the transition takes too long.
You might endanger your children’s lives—either materially, or their future, or their mental health.
Or you and your family may go without adequate food or medical care for months or even years—if you had it to begin with.
When the stakes are this high, how voluntary is your “choice” to stay in a job that exploits you? These aren’t minor inconveniences. They’re life-altering consequences that can destroy families and futures.
BIG PICTURE: This is why workers often remain in jobs where they’re underpaid, overworked, harassed, or even abused.
It’s not because they enjoy suffering—it’s because the alternative is often worse. And that keeps workers working for as little pay as possible.
The system has engineered desperation as a feature, not a bug.
FOR COMPARISON: When legal slavery was abolished (mostly), capitalism replaced it with a new form of bondage through economic coercion.
Unlike chattel slavery, where chains were visible, modern workers are bound by invisible chains of debt, healthcare dependency, and the basic needs for survival.
Both systems use economic desperation to extract labor while maintaining the fiction that the arrangement is somehow voluntary or beneficial to the worker.
GOING FURTHER: The new arrangement can be even cheaper for the employer than enslavement. In chattel slavery, owners had to house, feed, and provide medical care for the workers they enslaved—all of which was expensive.
Today’s system is far more efficient for the ruling class: employers get labor without the costs of maintaining workers.
When workers break down, get sick, or become too old to be productive, they’re simply discarded and replaced.
BOTTOM LINE: Just as enslaved people could not simply leave, most workers today facing homelessness, medical bankruptcy, or starvation cannot realistically refuse employment—and that is the opposite of freedom.
📖 A brief history lesson
This has always been true about capitalism.
LOOKING BACKWARDS: Over a hundred years before Milton Friedman mass-marketed the idea that capitalism equals freedom, one of the O.G. critics of capitalism, Frederick Engels, had already proved it false.
Engels, who co-authored the Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx, noted that factory workers “seem to be free because they are not sold once for all, but piecemeal by the day, the week, the year.”
But to him, this “freedom” is an illusion. Workers are “forced to sell themselves” over time instead of all at once, “being the slave of no particular person, but of the whole property-holding class.”
Engels’ key insight here: Capitalism forces people to participate, but makes it look like a choice. He wrote,
“Fine freedom, where the worker has no other choice than that of either accepting the conditions which the owners offer, or of starving, of freezing to death, of sleeping naked among the beasts of the forests!”
Although it’s not taught in American schools, the progressive movement at the end of the 1800s agreed with Engels, and many considered wage labor another form of slavery.
🗽 True freedom
True freedom in the modern world requires more than the absence of physical chains. It demands genuine security—the assurance that basic human needs will be met regardless of economic circumstances.
What good is freedom of speech when speaking out against your employer's unsafe practices means losing your job, your healthcare, and your ability to feed your family?
What good is freedom of choice when your "choice" is between bankrupting your family with cancer treatment or dying quietly to spare them the debt?
What does religious freedom mean when you're working three jobs just to keep a roof over your head, with no time left for worship, reflection, or spiritual community?
How free are you to pursue happiness when you're trapped in endless cycles of debt, stress, and exhaustion just to survive?
Real freedom means having your fundamental needs guaranteed: housing that won’t disappear if you lose your job, healthcare that isn’t tied to employment, food security that doesn’t depend on your productivity, education for your children that doesn’t bankrupt your family.
ZOOM OUT: Understanding capitalism as a form of slavery isn’t about self-pity or hopelessness. It’s about clarity.
When we recognize that our boss isn’t our friend and the market isn’t looking out for our interests, we can begin to organize for genuine change.
Workers who understand their true position in this system can band together to demand better.
We can push for policies that guarantee housing, healthcare, and education as human rights rather than market commodities.
We can build alternative economic structures that prioritize human needs over profit maximization.
We can come together to end private, third-party “ownership” of companies, replacing it with employee ownership and true democratic control.
The first step toward freedom is recognizing that we’re not free. The second step is joining with others who share our chains.
The final step is breaking those chains together.
BOTTOM LINE: Capitalism has convinced us that economic desperation equals freedom, that choosing between bad options constitutes choice, and that a system designed to extract our labor while keeping us insecure somehow serves our interests.
These lies keep us trapped in a modern form of bondage that’s more efficient and profitable than anything that came before.
Real freedom isn’t the right to choose between different forms of exploitation.
It means having your basic needs guaranteed so you can make genuine choices about how to spend your life. Until we achieve that security for everyone, we remain slaves to a system that treats human beings as disposable resources in service of endless profit.
The choice is clear: continue accepting the chains of capitalism, or join the growing movement to build something better. The only question is how much longer we’re willing to pretend we’re free while living as slaves.
Like this article? Become a member of NOTICE News!
We're a small independent news organization—and to stay that way, and keep reporting the deeper truths behind the day's headlines—we need your support.
Consider becoming a member to get full access to our Sunday Deep Dives (like this one), join a troll-free online community, and help make this journalism possible.
Thanks for reading and supporting NOTICE News. We’ll be back next Sunday with another Deep Dive.
Our daily digest returns tomorrow morning.
Questions or comments? Just reply to this e-mail.
Thank you for reading! - Andrew & Anthony