Hugo Rait Mei's commentary tries to create a one‑sided, black‑and‑white opposition for the less educated reader. According to him, the market economy, capitalism, and consumer culture are one and the same, opposed (again as a single, uniform phenomenon!) by leftism, neo‑Marxism, degrowth, and ecology. This is, of course, complete nonsense.

Let us begin with Mei's claim: "Capitalism is, so far, the only economic system known to have been able to raise living standards on a mass scale." A fundamental error lies here. Mei draws an equals sign between the historical national market economy and today's borderless global capitalism subordinated to giant corporations. A true national conservative must be able to distinguish between the two, because the latter poses a direct threat to nation‑statehood and traditional values.

When we speak of the economic systems that led the Western world to unprecedented prosperity, we are not talking at all about contemporary global capitalism. Nineteenth‑century economic success was based on strong protectionism and the prioritization of national interests. That was something very different from what we today know under the label of capitalism.

Economic thinkers of that era, such as Friedrich List and the Historical School, understood well that the market is not an end in itself. The market economy was meant to be a means to strengthen the nation, the state, and society. The domestic market was protected, local production was encouraged, and the economy was meant to function in harmony with traditions and the environment. The entrepreneur was part of his community and bore responsibility for the fate of the nation. It was precisely such a system that raised living standards while remaining aligned with national aspirations.

By now we have arrived at a very different kind of capitalism, one that has lost its national dimension and sense of loyalty. The current system is based on the dominance of international megacorporations over sovereign states. Global firms move their production to countries with cheap labor and optimize taxes wherever it benefits them. They have no interest in the survival of nations, cultural heritage, or the protection of the natural environment. Their sole objective is profit.

Modern capitalism, oriented toward endless growth, requires constantly increasing and ever‑accelerating consumption in order to function. To achieve this, perpetual dissatisfaction and the need for new things must be created within people. Traditional virtues and peasant wisdom — thrift, repairing things, durability, avoiding living beyond one's means, and communal sharing — are obstacles to global consumer capitalism. The system requires people to be rootless individualists who seek identity and consolation in the next purchase.

To keep the wheel of consumption turning, we are flooded with uniform, easily consumable mass culture that undermines heritage culture, the family, and national distinctiveness. Traditions are commodified and reduced to yet another marketing niche. A national conservative must criticize this kind of capitalism; otherwise, he is no national conservative at all.

Among other things, Mei uses World Bank statistics to justify the Western economic model, claiming that economic growth lifted a billion people out of poverty. But note that most of that billion came from China's economic opening, which is not a free market at all, but state capitalism. Moreover, the fact that people in some developing countries have been lifted out of extreme poverty does not in any way justify a consumer culture in which an Estonian or a European buys a new smartphone every two years or clothes from fast‑fashion brands. More possessions do not make Western people happier, nor do they heal society's pain points.

Mei's commentary radiates a naïve assumption that every additional percentage point of economic growth automatically equals technological progress and human advancement. That may have been true during the Industrial Revolution or even in the mid‑20th century, but today's consumer capitalism lost that connection long ago. Technological development does not require blind, permanent economic growth; on the contrary, the current economic model actually suffocates creativity and innovation.

Most of today's economic growth does not direct resources toward solving existential problems, but instead goes to waste on the ever‑expanding altar of consumer culture. The greatest technological achievements of our time are no longer aimed at conquering space or eradicating diseases. Instead, the world's sharpest engineering minds and enormous resources are devoted to creating ever‑new smartphones and social‑media algorithms, producing only degraded entertainment and addictions for billions of people. This is a clear civilizational regression.

One of the drivers of such growth is also planned obsolescence built into essential goods. Products are no longer designed to last, because durability and quality harm economic growth. This absurd logic has led to unprecedented global environmental damage in the form of massive landfills and resource depletion, and simultaneously to cultural decline, where people no longer know how to value, repair, or preserve things. A national conservative should stand for durability and conservation, rather than producing disposable waste.

Pursuing economic growth at any cost has yet another very heavy price from a national perspective. Specifically, a growth‑oriented model increasingly demands the inflow of cheap labor to keep wages low and consumption high. Contemporary capitalism does not care about the survival of nation‑states; in this system, the individual and the nation are merely replaceable cogs.

The demand for perpetual economic growth ignores fundamental limits of reality. The dogma of endless growth is just as detached from life as communism. Both ideologies believe that human nature and the laws of nature can be ignored or rewritten, and that perfect prosperity will then arrive.

Timeless wisdom lies in understanding that the world and history move in cycles. Economic growth cannot last forever, just as peace, summer, or human joy cannot last forever. Since growth is not always within our control, a healthy society must be able to function under different conditions as well. If universities instill in economists and future leaders the worldview that growth must be achieved at every moment and at any cost, we ensure a system that will collapse at the first serious crisis.

There is no need to inject young people with the illusion of eternal abundance; instead, we must cultivate resilience and endurance for difficult times. Constant abundance and comfort inevitably produce laziness and softness — qualities fatal to a civilization. The West's era of endless abundance is in any case coming to an end due to geopolitical and ecological limits.

Therefore, students who recognize the problem and discuss degrowth or a balanced economy are far greater realists than those who bury their heads in the sand and demand a return to the growth illusions of past decades. This is an awakening from the Western comfort zone.

When an author who calls himself a national conservative attacks young people while justifying the Western decline based on unrestrained mass consumption, the question arises: which values is he really defending? It is certainly not national conservatism, but pure neoliberalism, which destroys precisely traditional and national heritage. To preserve the homeland, balance must be rediscovered.

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