Monetizing Survival: How Capitalism Is Turning Poverty into a Business Model

 

Pay-as-You-Breathe

There was a time when capitalism sold dreams — luxury cars, shiny homes, designer brands. Now it sells air. Or close enough. The latest form of capitalism doesn’t market aspiration anymore; it monetizes necessity. From gas cookers that require a token to open the valve, to prepaid electricity, to “Lipa Mdogo Mdogo” phones, we are witnessing the birth of a world where the poor must pay rent not only for shelter but for survival itself.

The image of a gas cooker with a token meter attached to it is both absurd and prophetic. You insert twenty shillings, the valve opens, and you can cook — for a while. When it runs out, your dinner goes cold mid-boil. And if you try to tamper with the system, a digital alarm is triggered, and you get a call from the supplier asking why you’re trying to breathe without paying first.

Capitalism has always thrived on scarcity, but now it manufactures scarcity to keep the poor obedient. What used to be one-time purchases are now subscriptions. You don’t own anything anymore — not your phone, not your data, not your gas, not even your software. Everything is designed to extract a daily fee, to tether you to a system that punishes any attempt at independence.

This is not about innovation. It’s about surveillance and control. Every payment leaves a data trail, every token links to a profile, every bill creates dependency. And as the poor adjust to this new normal, they internalize a dangerous idea — that survival is a service, not a right. That to exist, one must continuously pay.

Capitalism has evolved into something predatory — a system that sees human need not as a moral obligation to be met, but as a renewable resource to be mined. The poor are not customers anymore; they are commodities in an endless cycle of micro-payments. The more desperate they are, the more profitable they become.

The Illusion of Access

The propaganda of modern capitalism is wrapped in the language of empowerment. “We’re giving everyone access!” “We’re making life easier!” “We’re including the unbanked!” But behind these slogans lies the cruelest trick of all — the illusion of inclusion.

Take “Lipa Mdogo Mdogo” — a program that claims to help low-income earners afford smartphones. It sounds noble. But in truth, it traps users in digital servitude. The phones come with built-in remote locks: miss a payment, and your device shuts down. Your photos, contacts, messages — gone. You don’t even own your phone until you’ve paid it off in full, and by then, a newer model has already made it obsolete.

It’s sold as a bridge to opportunity, but it’s really a leash. And this pattern repeats across industries — from credit apps that offer “instant loans” with predatory interest, to e-commerce sites selling “affordable installments” that never seem to end.

The brilliance of this modern system is that it doesn’t need physical coercion. There’s no debt collector knocking at your door — the collector is in your pocket, coded into your phone, your fridge, your stove. It’s digital feudalism, and you are the tenant.

Even more tragic is how people celebrate this bondage as progress. The poor are told they are being “empowered” — that having access to expensive products through daily payments means freedom. But what kind of freedom is it when you can’t miss a single payment without being locked out of your own life?

This is the genius of late-stage capitalism — it convinces the oppressed to celebrate their own chains. It takes the language of empowerment and turns it into marketing for dependency. The poor think they are advancing, but in truth, they are renting their lives one token at a time.

The Poverty Premium

There’s a dark irony in how the world treats the poor. Those with the least often pay the most. Economists call it the poverty premium: the phenomenon where poor people end up paying higher prices for goods and services because they can only afford to buy in small quantities.

A wealthy person can buy gas in bulk or pay annual rent upfront, saving thousands. A struggling mother, however, must buy tokens for her cooker, kerosene in tiny bottles, or electricity in small units. The smaller the purchase, the higher the cost per unit. Poverty punishes frugality.

In Kenya and across Africa, capitalism has learned to weaponize smallness. You can buy airtime for 10 bob, water in sachets, sugar in spoon-sized packets, and even credit “per minute.” These are not acts of generosity — they are precise mechanisms of extraction. Micro-payments sound merciful, but they guarantee that the poor never escape the payment loop.

Worse still, there’s the psychological toll. Every small transaction reminds you of your place in the social hierarchy. You are not trusted to own; you are permitted to borrow. The rich can consume in peace, but the poor must constantly prove their worth — one token at a time.

And so capitalism finds a way to profit not just from the wealth of nations but from their poverty. It studies the habits of the desperate and monetizes them. It sells convenience to the middle class, but it sells survival to the poor. And every purchase, no matter how small, strengthens the system that keeps them down.

When survival becomes transactional, dignity becomes optional. Poverty stops being an accident and becomes a business model — one that thrives on keeping people exactly where they are.

The Data Economy: When Exploitation Becomes Invisible

Modern capitalism doesn’t just feed on money — it feeds on information. The same systems that sell you tokens or micro-loans are also quietly harvesting your data: your location, habits, income patterns, and vulnerabilities. The new oil isn’t crude — it’s human behavior.

When you buy gas through a smart meter, your consumption is recorded. When you use your “Lipa Mdogo Mdogo” phone, your financial patterns are logged. These aren’t isolated conveniences; they are surveillance mechanisms disguised as customer service.

In the past, exploitation was visible — chains, labor, land grabs. Today, it’s invisible and algorithmic. You give away your data freely in exchange for convenience, not realizing it’s being sold to companies that use it to predict (and profit from) your struggles.

And because the poor generate more “data activity” — frequent small transactions, credit requests, and service interactions — they produce more profit for the system. In essence, their instability becomes valuable. The poorer you are, the more trackable you are — and the more predictable your consumption becomes.

It’s a terrifying inversion of justice: the oppressed are not only exploited but studied, mapped, and monetized. And yet, because this exploitation comes in the language of technology — apps, dashboards, innovation hubs — it’s applauded as progress.

This is the invisible cruelty of our time. The world has turned poverty into a measurable, scalable product — and the digital poor are its most valuable resource.

The Ethics of Enough

The question, then, is — how do we break free? How do we reclaim humanity from a system that measures life in tokens and transactions?

The answer isn’t easy, but it begins with awareness. Capitalism thrives on our collective amnesia — our willingness to normalize absurdity. We need to remember that access is not ownership, and convenience is not freedom.

Communities must begin to rebuild local trust systems — cooperatives, neighborhood energy grids, savings groups — that allow people to regain some control over their basic needs. We must resist the slow creep of total dependence on corporations for our survival.

Governments, too, must be held accountable for enabling these predatory systems. Regulatory bodies that celebrate “innovation” without ethics are complicit in digital colonization. They let tech giants operate unchecked while citizens pay with both money and privacy.

But above all, we must change the story. Poverty is not a market opportunity; it’s a moral failure of the collective. When a society allows its people to live under token meters and digital locks, it has lost its soul.

Humanity was not meant to live like this — paying daily rent to exist. The measure of progress should not be how efficiently we can charge people for breathing, cooking, or connecting, but how compassionately we can ensure that no one has to choose between hunger and dignity.

The real revolution isn’t in technology — it’s in empathy. It’s in saying: enough.

Final Reflection

Capitalism has mastered the art of disguise — it sells oppression in the packaging of progress. But beneath the shiny language of innovation lies the same old exploitation — repackaged, digitized, and automated.

When you have to pay a token to cook, or risk losing your phone for missing a payment, you are not living in a smart economy — you are living in a prison with Wi-Fi.

And until we call it what it is, until we reclaim the idea that survival should not be monetized, the poor will continue to be milked, one twenty-shilling token at a time.