These kinds of conspiracies are real—and there are other conspiracies that are also real and distinctly seedier than those hatched in antiseptic boardrooms in New York and London to rig prices or fool regulators or sabotage a newly elected socialist government in the Global South. That’s because the surface layers of markets that middle-class people in wealthy parts of the planet engage with directly—brightly lit grocery stores and gas stations, sleek websites and dull offices—are not the whole story of capitalism; they are its storefront. All of these operations require a level of extraction from their workers, shoppers, and users, but they also sit on top of more hidden parts of the supply chain, zones of hyper-exploitation, human containment, and ecosystem poisoning that are not glitches in the system but have always been integral parts of what makes our world run.

XREF: Connects to work on supply chains, global inequality, and critiques of consumer-facing capitalism showing only the 'storefront.' FICTION: The metaphor of capitalism's storefront versus its hidden engine room could structure a narrative revealing the underbelly behind everyday purchases.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 776