If you accept the idea that there is no ethical consumption or production under capitalism, a serious question arises: Should you work?
What does it mean to work? Generally, the average person is a wage earner. They sell their labour to an employer in order to afford food to survive. To work thus means to engage with the system, to be a part of society and contribute something that someone somewhere wants done in exchange for the means of survival.
Implicit in this is the reality that there is a fundamental, basic cost to living. Someone, somewhere, is farming the food that you eat, and in a very roundabout way, you are, by participating in the economy, returning the favour. This is ignoring the whole issue of capitalism’s merits. At the end of the day, the economy is a system that feeds and clothes and provides shelter, how ever imperfectly and unfairly. Even if it is not necessarily the most just and perfect system, it nevertheless does provide for most people the amenities that allow a good life.
Thus, in an abstract sense, work is fair. It is fair that the time spent by people to provide food and clothing and shelter is paid back by your spending your time to earn a living, regardless of whatever form that takes. On a basic level, it’s at least minimally fair that you exchange your time and energy for other people’s time and energy. Capitalism may not be fair, but the basic idea of social production is right.
So, if you are able to, please work. Work because in an ideal society, work is your contribution to some common good. It is you adding to the overall utility by doing something that seems needed by someone enough that they’ll pay you for it. Even if in practice, the reality of the system is less than ideal, the fact is that on a basic level, work needs to be done by someone somewhere for people to live.
While you work, try to do so as morally as possible, by choosing insofar as it is possible the professions that are productive and useful to society, and making decisions that reflect your values rather than that of the bottom line. If you must participate in capitalism to survive, then at least try to be humane about it.