Here.
Please don't read comments until you've read this. It is very short and fast to read. It is radicalizing. It is a good short story to send to your friend who needs to understand what capitalism is. LeGuin wrote this in 1973, cementing her status as Chad Supreme of Fuck Mountain. Bow before her might.
Let's discuss in the comments below.
Worth noting omelass is a better world than ours.
Most things about our world suck and we have countless lives being fed into worse meatgrinders than that closet
That closet basically describes a fairly average persons stay in solitary and we have thousands of people doing just that in america. Only, the upside we get from that is some guy who owns a prison can buy a fancier jetski. He was gonna buy a jetski anyway, but the extra money he gets from the extra torture just means he can have a nicer one.
Omelas is a better world for everyone but that one child, sure. But it's fucked that you have to live your life knowing that child is suffering--perhaps entirely unnecessarily--just so you can be fine.