Introduction
Welcome to the Mid-week Catch-up where I send out something in the middle of the week that should be of some interest!
The World is Hard, This is Not
If you’re new here, my name is Cameron Lee Cowan M.A. MFA, and I’m the Creative Director here at The Cameron Journal. You can learn more about me on the about page. I do research and commentary on politics, culture, and the world around us. Remember, The World is Hard, This is Not.
For as long as I’ve been writing—across books, essays, and newsletters—I’ve tried to ask the simple question, “what the hell is going on?” For me, that question has always come back to capitalism. The word itself stirs up everything from high-minded dreams of the American promise to late-night cable shrieks about socialism. But beneath the noise, it strikes me how little real conversation we’re having about capitalism’s shape, status, and direction. The world is burning, wages stagnate, AI is already claiming jobs faster than most realize, and yet the recurring narrative is either “the market will provide” or “just work harder.” So here’s where I want to return to something too rare these days: an honest, wide-open conversation about capitalism.
The Promise We Bought
Let’s start at the beginning. When I look back through the essays collected in What the Hell is Going On? and across The Cameron Journal, I see the same thing over and over. The mythology of capitalism is familiar—social mobility, innovation, the freedom to build, buy, and try. The Founders themselves were hardly free from the lure of property and profit (James Madison, for one, was a plantation owner deeply entwined with the economic system of his time).
Before industrialization, most businesses were small, local and heavily regulated by customs, guilds or monarchs. The rise of capital—pooled wealth put to productive means—changed everything. The industrial revolution gave us more output for less labor. Mass production bred mass markets. For a while, it really did democratize things. It gave us cheap shoes, warm homes, and the idea that a hard worker could thrive.
But as I’ve written time and again, this promise was always conditional—it was only attainable for some, and only for a time.
Sliding Into Silence
If capitalism once felt like the backdrop to the American Dream, what happened to the debate about its winners and losers? In the haze after the 2008 crisis, people started digging again—picking at the tangled knot of how “We the People” became “We the Corporation.” But the shock faded, and so did the sense of urgency. The economic news cycle moved on; the real discussions about labor, power, and inequality—those got drowned out by market tickers and the relentless push to “get back to growth.”
And let’s not ignore the deliberate shaping of this conversation. As I argue in my essays on policy and deregulation (“1977: The Rise of Discounters and Deregulation”), the rise of neoliberalism was not an accident or an act of nature. It was a policy—one designed to favor capital over labor, to whittle down friction, and to turn the American workforce into a cheap, flexible commodity that could always lose out to cheaper overseas labor.
Wages stopped growing. Gig work and zero-hour contracts snowballed across the developed world. In 2022, the Economic Policy Institute reported that CEO pay grew 1,460% since 1978, while typical worker wages grew just 18% (EPI, 2023). Ordinary people were told to be grateful the stock market was up, even if the rent, the doctor, and the daycare were all one bad month away from ruin.
The Real View From Main Street
This isn’t just theory; I saw the seams myself. I started out as a freelance business writer in the years after the Great Recession, freelancing for companies that saw my labor as a transaction—cheap, quick, disposable. In my book, I talk about “The Death of Main Street.” Once upon a time, small business meant you could build and pass something on. Now, if you aren’t born with capital, the best you can do is hustle for the next gig. Uber and DoorDash do not replace the hardware store your grandparents built.
This reality isn’t the fault of greedy CEOs alone—though greed abounds. It is the logical outcome of a system that, as I’ve argued before, seeks a frictionless return on capital. Worker, community, planet: these are costs to be minimized, not values in themselves.
Take agriculture as a case study. In my study of agriculture, I chronicled how independent farmers have become captives to corporations like Tyson. They hold the land, take the debts, and bear all the risk, while the profits stream outward to shareholders far removed from the dirt and sweat. This is the reality at the root of America’s cheap food: low pay, debt peonage, and systemic exploitation.
The Crisis Arrives—And We Still Don’t Talk
The strange thing is, none of this is difficult to see. The cost-of-living crisis is on every front page. According to Pew Research Center, 63% of Americans now say the U.S. economic system favors the wealthy (Pew Research, 2024). Tech layoffs come in waves; AI has already slashed white-collar jobs as companies “streamline” staff with little warning (TechCrunch, 2024). Climate change threatens entire regions, while insurance giants quietly pull out of at-risk areas because profit margins won’t bend for disaster.
Yet mainstream conversation is either “that’s just the market” or “something will turn up.” Where is the real debate? When do we, as citizens, as neighbors, as people, finally demand something different from an economy that extracts but does not nurture?
Imagining the Next Conversation
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I have no clever answer for what comes after capitalism. But I am certain a reckoning is coming, and the next phase must be built on honest engagement with these realities. If we are to reclaim our democracy, if we want a system that works for the many and not just the few, we must talk about how we got here and where capitalism can no longer take us.
We need to break free from the idea that the logic of Wall Street is the logic of Main Street. We must see the government not as a handmaiden to corporate interest but as a tool for public good. Social safety nets, universal basic income, robust labor protections—none of this is “radical” compared to the radical dispossession so many now face.
Where Do We Go From Here?
The old conversation about capitalism—one that assumed the system would self-correct—has run its course. It is time, long past time, to restart honest inquiry. I try always to leave you with more than just my take. If you want to dig deeper, check the “What the Hell is Going On? collection:
I want to know what you think: What happened to our conversation about capitalism? What should we demand next? Drop a comment, reply to this newsletter, or join the discussion on The Cameron Journal.
Let’s stop pretending the market will fix what the market has broken. The time for a new conversation is now.
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