Unbridled capitalism is inherently cancerous.

What is a cancer? It's not something that invades from the outside. It's the body turning on itself in a way that eventually kills the whole.

Cancer happens when an organ can’t stop producing. Cells reproduce endlessly, with no stopping point. This overproduction leads to disease — crowding out healthy cells and functions.

The parallel to society is almost eerie. When a segment of society -- a corporation, a government, or even an individual -- starts to amass more and more, without an upper boundary, our social ecosystem becomes sick. To survive, corporations must endlessly grow and boost shareholder value—often at the cost of everything else.

Recent events show our society’s unease with this unrestricted profit motive. In December of 2024, Luigi Maglioni shot and killed the CEO of UnitedHealthcare in broad daylight.

You don’t have to condone the act to understand the rage behind it. The event forced a spotlight on the ethical rot inside an industry that profits off delayed care, denied claims, and human suffering.

Why is it that we tolerate large corporations that offer insurance but fail to deliver it? Why do we accept a system where corporations promise security, but profit from withholding it?

They have bureaucratic strongholds to deny claims and dissuade people from cashing in on valid policies. These delays and denials leave families cornered: someone’s life, or their financial life. Often, they simply cannot afford to choose their life. This game of denying claims as an economic hedge is a sanitized abstraction of second-degree murder.

These choices are made because of the economic structure. If an organization's inherent directive is to perpetually grow, it will do so at the expense of the health of all else. This is cancerous by definition.

I wish I could go beyond an armchair diagnosis of this malignancy, but the problem is so big that I have to admit, I'm not sure what to do. At the very least, we can ask ourselves: is the cancer spreading to me? Am I also caught in this loop—this relentless push for more?

Perhaps the antidote is to define and adhere to enoughness.

Decide what is enough and cap your upside.