Marcuse: capitalism keeps you docile by satisfying needs it invented

In 'One-Dimensional Man', Marcuse argued advanced industrial society manufactures 'false needs' -- for the latest gadget, status symbol, or diet -- that lock people into the very system producing them. He called the result 'repressive desublimation': you're free to consume and indulge, but that freedom quietly replaces the deeper freedom to question the system itself. The more comfortable and entertained a society becomes, Marcuse warned, the harder it is to imagine wanting anything different.

— Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man — Chapter 1, 'The New Forms of Control', 1964
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