Only 19% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 identify as capitalists. That is a staggering number, one that signals a sea-change in how America defines itself as these young people age.

What if the music industry’s struggle to adjust to a digital marketplace isn’t about the inability to adapt to changing formats? What if they’re a microcosm of the entire American capitalist endeavor — a structure nearly everyone under 30 seems to have lost faith in? Will that faith be battered even more if TIDAL is revealed to be a house of cards, blown over by the stiff wind of scrutiny?

The economics of the new millennium are starting to make the “I can sell water to a well” braggadocio of hip-hop entrepreneurship look a little funny in the light. Things will truly be a wrap for some of these elder statesmen when it becomes corny. And I think we’re heading there, because in a world of instant information, it’s too hard to hide the truth under a rock. At some point, the strobe lights have to stop flashing in the club, and we all have to walk out into the wee hours of the morning and assess our life choices.

Did you know Jay-Z’s stake in the Nets was only 0.067%? Would so many Black Americans have been running around calling him a co-owner with the same pride ringing in their voices if they’d known that?

Celebrity is a mirage. Constructing it is a sleight-of-hand business, one that Jay-Z has mastered. And it’s been entertaining to watch. But it’s time for the rest of hip-hop — particularly us older consumers — to grow up. We need to stop believing everything we see posted on Instagram, and a lot of what we see in the pages of Forbes and The Wall Street Journal. It’s not only streaming numbers that get fudged — those net worth figures so many love to cite are inflated, too. And too many people don’t understand what those numbers even mean, if you were to take them at face value. That’s why when Diddy said he wanted to buy the “North Carolina Panthers,” so many of you believed he could.

The wealth of Black celebrities — who are the totems of Black success — isn’t what it seems. And the sooner we wake up to that, the sooner we’ll realize that entrepreneurship isn’t going to save Black communities.

I know I just killed Santa Claus for some of you, so let me be clear: I’m not saying Black-owned businesses are destined for failure. I’m saying that touting entrepreneurship as the path for Black economic opportunity is relying on individualized solutions to address massive collective problems. So many programs for Black youth — from organizations as varied as the NAACP to Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp — seem to have entrepreneurship at or near the center of their strategy to facilitate economic advancement for Black people. That scares me. And here’s why:

Capitalism has failed.

I didn’t say “capitalism will fail unless ‘x’ happens” I said: CAPITALISM HAS FAILED.

I’ve just emptied another clip into Santa, I know. But now that we’re truly beginning to see the ravages of climate change — all the result of capitalism’s vagaries — can we afford to keep fooling ourselves? Our way of life, all this consumption and acquisitiveness, all this waste, isn’t just spiritually and emotionally unsatisfying, it is suicidal. It is geocidal. We are destroying the climatic conditions required for our species to survive.

I am Jamaican. I don’t have the luxury of lying to myself anymore. I saw what happened last hurricane season. It will be my country’s turn soon.

Category 4 and 5 storms bearing down on the Caribbean every year is going to destroy our economies. Micro loans and small business workshops aren’t going to fix that. What happened in Houston and South Florida will keep happening, too. Megastorms, extended droughts, and other environmental catastrophes are going to violently upend people’s lives regularly. How is anyone supposed to create wealth if they have to rebuild from scratch every few years?

Capitalism has failed us.

Entrepreneurship isn’t going to save us.

Black and Brown people in the Global South are already being brutally punished for the environmental malfeasance of the West. As are Black and Brown people in America. And it’s only going to get worse. It’s not an accident that Flint still doesn’t have clean water, while Nestle has bottling rights at a fresh water source nearby that it pays next to nothing for. That is capitalism functioning as intended.