You cannot disengage from capitalism. The tricks you describe are perhaps useful to not be the slowest antelope in the herd but that doesn't mean you are fully free from being exploited.
Let's be clear: it's entirely possible to leave the "herd". People can and do go completely off-grid and thus disengage from capitalism. The crucial point is that the vast majority of us choose not to. That choice is what makes your "slowest antelope" analogy so much more complex.
An antelope's greatest desire is to be in the herd, because while it may contain a lion, the world outside contains a thousand wolves.
We've built a herd—society—that is incredibly effective at holding those wolves at bay: famine, plague, and chaos. We willingly participate because it provides "shields" our ancestors could only dream of. The problem isn't the herd itself; it's the lion that we allow to stalk within it.
What I am suggesting isn't to abandon this safety and comfort brought by modern capitalism. It's to improve the herd—to enjoy its protections while finding ways to tame, cage, or evade the lion of exploitation. What we're discussing here aren't futile attempts to escape, but vital tactics for building a better, safer herd for everyone.
Sure, a choice to opt out technically exists. But that common argument ignores two things:
First, the massive asymmetry of power involved in making people choose opting in (again and again, to greater and greater degrees).
Second, the fact that unrelated penalties—severe ones—are attached to choosing to opt out, by people and systems who want to discourage this behavior. It’s not like saying “choosing to not eat means you might be hungry”. That’s an intrinsic consequence; it has to happen. It’s not even like “choosing not to eat again and again means you might stunt your growth.” That’s intrinsic too, whether or not it’s intuitive.
No, the penalties we’ve attached to opting out are more like “choosing not to eat means you might go hungry, and also the people with hammers that specifically go after people that don’t eat will break your fingers.”
