Fallacy - Capitalism is Inherently Wasteful

The abundance of choice and offer available in capitalist societies has some people conclude that capitalism is wasteful. From this they go on to suggest that choice and offer should be reduce in order to save the planet from waste, making everyone better off in the process.

However, any waste that there may be cannot possibly come from capitalism. Giving bureaucrats the power to regulate it will therefore do nothing to reduce waste.

This is self evident from the fact that capitalists seek profit in all that they do. Producing a lot of stuff simply to dump it in a landfill makes no-one richer, and is therefore not the action of a capitalist. This will not happen unless some external entity provides a perverse incentive to do so.

Under free market capitalism, every entrepreneur will seek to reduce their waste as much as possible. The only external entity that could possibly convince the capitalist to produce stuff for no other purpose than to bury it is the state.

By Cezary p - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link