> I grew up in the USSR where you literally lacked physical stuff in your life that people in the rest of the world took for granted decades prior. Define "res

> I grew up in the USSR where you literally lacked physical stuff in your life that people in the rest of the world took for granted decades prior. Define "rest of the world" because for the time period when the USSR was in existence, my part of the world was either actively being colonised or foundering in the neocolonialist wake of independence. And that's the crux of it, isn't it? The world's foremost capitalist states (and the imperialist states that preceded them and laid the foundation for their current success) aren't less destructive than the USSR or than Maoist China. They simply had/have the dubious luxury of externalising the destruction and misery (and hiding it where it exists at home, in the poor and marginalised). The West built (and still builds) its abundance of "physical stuff" on the sweat, tears and sometimes literally blood of the developing world. Today's "free" market runs on the back of sweatshops, destabilisation and child labour - there has to be inequality and suffering elsewhere for companies to afford to put up the prices that consumers have become entitled to. But hey, that destructiveness is not in your own backyard, so I suppose it doesn't exist.