Why Capitalism Cannot Care

The Structural Logic That Penalizes Disabled People

Peter Joseph is a filmmaker & author; host of the podcast Revolution Now! and one can support his work through Patreon.

Modern societies take great pride in their supposed moral progress. We celebrate disability rights, promote inclusion, build accessible infrastructure, fund charitable organizations, and circulate slogans about diversity. We applaud ourselves for being compassionate and enlightened. Yet beneath this surface veneer lies a deeply uncomfortable truth: the prevailing economic structure—capitalism—cannot genuinely care for disabled people. Not because individuals are uncaring or malicious, but because the logic of the market economy systematically punishes anyone who cannot conform to its narrow definition of productivity.

In the capitalist framework, survival is conditional. Access to life’s necessities—food, shelter, healthcare, stability—depends on one’s ability to sell labor in the marketplace. When that ability is impaired or absent, survival becomes precarious, and dignity becomes negotiable. The consequences are predictable: disabled individuals face stigma, marginalization, and humiliation not due to cultural misunderstandings alone, but because the economy treats them as liabilities.

This is not a matter of personal prejudice. It is a matter of structural incentives.

To understand this fully, we must examine the mechanics of market logic. Capitalism is built on competition, profit maximization, and continuous cost reduction. Businesses survive by minimizing expenses, and wages are one of those expenses. Any worker who requires accommodations—be it flexible schedules, adaptive technologies, specialized training, or additional time—represents an increase in cost. In a competitive environment, firms that take on these costs make themselves economically vulnerable. They risk losing market share to competitors who choose not to accommodate.

Thus, even if employers are individually compassionate, the system rewards exclusion and punishes inclusion. Companies that avoid accommodating disabled individuals often gain an advantage, while those that attempt to be supportive risk financial penalty. Over time, this perverse incentive structure guarantees that disabled people will be systematically disadvantaged, regardless of a society’s stated values.

This is the real root of stigma. Disabled people are not stigmatized because society lacks empathy; they are stigmatized because the economic system implicitly teaches that they represent inefficiency, cost, and risk. When the market defines value as measurable output, any deviation from the standard template of productivity becomes a form of economic deficiency.

Alongside this structural bias emerges the myth of the “unproductive person.” Capitalism promotes the belief that contribution is defined solely through labor that can be commodified. If one’s labor cannot be sold profitably—because it is intermittent, slow, cognitively diverse, or incompatible with rigid industrial rhythms—then it is treated as worthless. This worldview dismisses entire categories of human capacity. People with autism, ADHD, depression, PTSD, anxiety, intellectual disabilities, chronic illness, or trauma-related limitations are written off not because they lack value, but because their value does not conform to the narrow, financially optimized parameters of market work.

In truth, many of these individuals excel in contexts that capitalism has no patience for: environments that require deep focus, creative bursts, high pattern recognition, sustained observation, empathetic care, unconventional problem-solving, artistic sensibilities, or non-linear abilities. But capitalism is hostile to diversity. It demands uniformity of pace, predictable outputs, standardized schedules, and consistent performance under pressure. Those who operate differently are not accommodated; they are penalized.

Thus, what capitalism calls “unproductive” is often nothing more than a mismatch between human variation and an inflexible economic model. The problem is not the person—it is the system.

Another pervasive misconception is the belief that society “cannot afford” to care for disabled people without conditions. This assertion becomes absurd once we examine the staggering levels of inefficiency and waste generated by the market system itself. Consider the vast sectors of labor and resource use that produce no real social value: advertising industries designed to manipulate desires; competitive duplication of nearly identical goods; planned obsolescence that intentionally produces waste; the financial sector’s speculative bubbles; bureaucratic insurance structures; unemployment as a permanent systemic feature; mass homelessness; policing, litigation, incarceration, and surveillance; and the enormous administrative apparatus required to determine who qualifies for assistance.

These sectors absorb trillions of dollars annually and consume enormous human energy. They exist not because they are necessary for human well-being, but because the market requires them as part of its competitive architecture. In contrast, the resources needed to support disabled individuals unconditionally are modest. The claim that disability support would collapse society is not only false—it distracts from the genuine inefficiencies that capitalism enshrines.

A genuinely humane economic framework would not treat disabled individuals as burdens, nor tie survival to economic performance. It would decouple access to life from labor and organize production around human need rather than market competition. Such a system is not speculative; it is increasingly feasible due to technological advancement, automation, open-source knowledge, shared production models, and cooperative management structures.

In such a system, the basics of life—food, shelter, healthcare, and essential goods—would be guaranteed as a public right rather than a conditional reward. Production would be coordinated cooperatively rather than competitively, allowing society to eliminate the redundant labor and waste endemic to capitalist markets. Automation and design optimization would steadily reduce the amount of necessary human labor, allowing people to contribute according to ability, preference, or circumstance rather than economic coercion.

In this context, support for disabled individuals is not a burden. It is integrated directly into the cooperative metabolism of society. Care work would be recognized as inherently valuable—socially stabilizing, regenerative, and essential to community health—rather than ignored or underpaid, as it is under capitalism. Supporting vulnerable individuals would be treated as a normal, dignified aspect of social life, not a charitable exception.

Moreover, a humane post-market system would understand neurodiversity and mental health variation not as moral failings but as forms of natural human diversity. Instead of pathologizing difference, it would build flexible contribution pathways that adapt to individual cognitive styles, energy cycles, and capacities. People who can contribute intermittently would still be respected. People who cannot contribute at all due to severe disability or chronic conditions would not be punished, shamed, or placed in survival jeopardy. Their access to life would be unconditional, because their worth is not contingent on output.

This leads to a crucial distinction often ignored in market discourse: the difference between someone who cannot conform to rigid labor structures and someone who intends to sabotage or exploit others. Capitalist systems routinely mislabel neurodivergent or mentally ill individuals as lazy, irresponsible, or malicious simply because they cannot perform at the expected tempo. But inability is not bad faith. In a rational and compassionate framework, genuine sabotage is exceedingly rare and easily distinguishable from cognitive variation or emotional distress.

A healthy economic structure would treat deviations from expected performance as system signals, not moral defects. If someone consistently struggles with a particular task, the solution is not punishment but task reassignment, additional support, a redesigned work environment, or collaborative assistance. If someone experiences episodic mental health challenges, the solution is flexibility, not exclusion. If someone has sensory differences, the environment should adapt. And if someone cannot contribute at all, they remain full members of the community regardless.

What matters in such a system is not conformity but human dignity and systemic viability. A society that recognizes this becomes stronger, not weaker. Supporting disabled individuals produces long-term stability, healthier communities, and stronger social cohesion. Punishing vulnerability only produces alienation, suffering, and wasted potential.

The fundamental point is this: an economic system that ties survival to performance cannot be truly compassionate. It can pity disabled individuals. It can subsidize them. It can create charitable structures to soften its harsher edges. But it cannot grant them unconditional dignity, because unconditional dignity violates the system’s logic. In capitalism, you must earn your right to live. Those who cannot earn are left to the mercy of bureaucratic filters or private kindness. That is not civilization; it is conditional mercy posing as ethics.

A society that treats its disabled members with genuine dignity must redesign its economic architecture from the ground up. It must abandon the idea that human worth can be measured by output. It must recognize that caring for the vulnerable is not a peripheral act of generosity, but a central function of social life. And it must ensure that survival is never conditional upon economic performance.

Capitalism cannot care—not because people are uncaring, but because its structure will not allow it. The system rewards exclusion, penalizes diversity, and moralizes productivity. It treats human beings as economic units rather than ends in themselves. If we are sincere about inclusion, dignity, and compassion, we cannot simply reform this structure. We must replace it with one that treats people as human first, and productive second—if at all.

Until then, disabled individuals will continue to bear the cost of an economic model that was never designed to include them. And society will continue to mistake structural violence for personal failure, reinforcing a moral narrative that justifies exclusion while masking its true cause.

We must do better. A civilization worthy of the name would not make survival conditional, nor stigmatize difference, nor treat care as burden. A humane society would treat every person as innately valuable, worthy of life without precondition. It would build systems that adapt to people, not systems that demand people adapt or be cast aside.

Capitalism cannot care. But we can. And it is time we built a system that does.

Peter Joseph is a filmmaker & author; host of the podcast Revolution Now! and one can support his work through Patreon.