Capitalism produces ubiquitous goods nobody actually wants but all must consume

Evidence

MF: My wife’s from Gravesend and in a hospital near Dartford, McDonald’s bid for the franchise of the restaurant. It is such a Philip K. Dick world to me where you can have shops in hospitals. I don’t intrinsically object to change — I just object to the fact that everybody’s change is shit. The thing about capitalism is that it provides things that nobody likes. When people talk about choice and capitalism — Microsoft, that sums up everything. Nobody wants it, everybody has to have it. It is the same with chains. Who is a big fan of them? Almost nobody, but we all have to go in them. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2270

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle on ‘choice’ as actually meaning coerced participation in a default monopoly — Microsoft and franchise chains as shared examples of ‘everybody’s change is shit’.
• CANDY: The observation that nobody likes the big chains but everyone uses them is a compact elevator-conversation provocation.
• XREF: connects to: Under capitalism consumption targets abstract value rather than bodily need — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 753; Capitalism requires perpetually unsatiated desire to maintain civilizational growth — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3420; Capitalism structurally requires excess for some and deprivation for others — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 1094 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Under capitalism consumption targets abstract value rather than bodily need #expands (0.82) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 753
• Capitalism requires perpetually unsatiated desire to maintain civilizational growth #expands (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3420
• Consumer culture’s desire-production reproduces itself autonomously without needing any external cause #expands (0.74) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 468
• Capitalism structurally requires excess for some and deprivation for others #qualifies (0.71) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1094