The cave was less about escaping lies to see the truth in general, and more about recognizing that our material world is subservient to forms like “the good.” Unfortunately, the material world comes before the concepts and ideas that Plato thought of as more real than reality. What Plato thought of as escaping the cave was really constructing a cave around oneself and thinking that was real. We need shelter to survive, and while building houses is better than relying on caves, we can’t live inside all the time. We can’t rely on reason alone; we need to mix it with observations. If reason disagrees with observations, then the reasoning is wrong.

The wealthy want to give us as little shelter as possible, because if we get shelter, we might be in a better position to fight them. They don’t realize that it won’t work. Capitalism leads to suffering, suffering leads to anger, and anger without wisdom leads people to bad solutions. Rising nationalism risks international war, and international war is an existential threat.

Capitalism is antithetical to our collective well-being, and it certainly isn’t compatible with democracy or personal freedom.