This chapter examines how unsustainable production-consumption systems are fundamentally linked to power relations and inequality. It analyzes the metabolic regime of modern society, where unprecedented resource use coincides with unmet human needs. The chapter explores how the “capital system” diverts social cooperation away from meeting basic needs toward generating profit-maximizing surplus through mechanisms of control, including cheapness generation, financialization, and materialistic value systems. Key features of this political economy include the systematic cost-shifting of ecological externalities, the failure of decoupling strategies, and the ideological frameworks legitimizing unsustainable arrangements. By understanding these mechanisms, we can better recognize how collective action becomes directed toward profit-maximizing surplus generation rather than socio-ecological wellbeing, despite technical capabilities to meet everyone’s needs sustainably.