If instead we’d had a glut of skilled labor, we’d have had people making intricate customizations to durable goods to adapt them to the owners.
But... not only didn’t we have that glut of skilled labor, but skilled labor is beneath a lot of people. It’s déclassé. And I’m starting to think that if we don’t get over that we’re going to be in for a world of hurt, not just from overconsumption but also from underemployment.
The imperative to get more revenue always points towards rent seeking. I'm not even sure how to theoretically separate planned obeselessence from other forms of rent seeking.
The left is derrided for wanting to abolish private property, but the irony is capitalism itself tends towards concentrating ownership away from all from most of us.
The absence of government intervention in to “change market forces” beyond it's intervention to establish the basic property model that characterizes capitalism is the central feature of capitalism as an economic system. It's true that modern “capitalist” states all intervene in this way to a significant extent, but that's because capitalism in its pure form was abandoned, almost universally, in the early-to-mid-20th century in favor of mixed economies in developed countries. But the philosophy of capitalism is still a potent force, and resists further intervention and motivates rollbacks of existing interventions.
You have one definition that any system that has private trade is capitalist. One definition that says any system that has any market intervention is not capitalist. One that claims any system that has private ownership of means of production is capitalist. One where you are not capitalist if you claim to be communist (looking at you China). And then the ones which include also "industrial production" in the equation in one form or another. Whatever you mean by "industrial".
I don't know about defenders of current western way of life, but the opponents typically don't declare their definitions of capitalism in beforehand. So it's incredibly unlikely to have any solid argument against them.