I couldn't really get into the article, and it seems like you needed to know something about the author's definition of "Selfish Capitalism" to understand it --- seems like he makes a distinction between that and other kinds of capitalism, and I wasn't understanding that. But I do think that our runaway consumerism is not making us any happier. Some studies have shown that scientific measures of happiness have not gone up even though we have more material wealth and more consumer goods than we ever have before. I don't know if there is any connection between consumerism and mental illness, but I think there is a certain dissatisfaction with the emptiness of consumersim. And I think there may be some kind of alienation as well. And as we learn more about how degraded our world is becoming from rampant consumerism, we have guilt added to it too. Those things do not add up to happiness and may be a recipe for mental illness.

I think consumerism has just become the way we are without us even thinking about it anymore. Our governemnt encourages it as a way to keep up the economy, and advertising and the media encourage it as a way to boost profits. When we have a feeling of dissatisfaction, we try to buy something to fill the hole. But it doesn't feed us what we need. We hunger for something we have never tasted. We yearn for a place we have never been.