And now we have ten years of fucked up young adults who think this is how it’s always been.

"Enshittification" better be the word of the year.

Corporations don’t invent new products or improve existing ones anymore. The R&D needed costs too much along with creating the tooling to manufacture and distribute products. Usually quite the opposite, they look how to cheapen products’ construction and durability while charging more to increase the profit margin.

It’s far easier to make a product a subscription, or desirable features a subscription, sell commonly needed add-ons separately at ridiculously inflated costs (like printer ink or power tool batteries) or as you said, insert middle-men to extract fees for the convenience of their existing between the customer and the desired product.

And now AI is inserting itself in the insertion!

Just ask AI to make your Door Dash order for your Pizza delivery driver.

Capitalism since...ever. Regulation is the only balance and that no longer exists.

Complete with Trump-as-Biff-as-Trump.

Thank Reagan.

When he deregulated the banks he gave a blank check to a bunch of third raters who'd gone to small time banks because they knew they couldn't cut it anywhere else.

If I ever invent a time machine, I'm making a few pit stops on my way back in time to cap Hitler, and Milton Friedman and his friends are on the list. He's the misanthrope who popularized the idea that the only duty of a company's leadership is to deliver profit, and any other pursuit is a disservice to the shareholders. This is known as the Friedman Doctrine.

The MBAs are making use of the math associated with risk management. An MBA with a flat tire teleworks for the day or takes a second car to work while a mobile mechanic service fixes the tire. A shift worker misses the shift and potentially loses the job for not finding someone to cover the shift.

MBAs who need a wrench can buy whichever wrench they want because they can afford it: a low end wrench if they need it to work once, a mid tier wrench if they're looking for a mix of quality and cost, or a high end wrench if they like to buy it for life. A shift worker buys what they can afford and has to pray it doesn't break because prayer is the only insurance they can afford.

A shift worker can't afford a better wrench because a team of economists, psychologists, and political scientists have calculated exactly how low they can pay a person and keep the economy from grinding to a halt. An MBA eats lunch for $15 every day because nobody charges them $150.

The stock market is both. No .....?

...and your personal data would be wholly under your control.

But then, how can the IC spy on you without a warrant.

Amen, brotha! I am so sick of being solicited, constantly.

Like 10 minutes ago I was trying to figure out the cost of adding a hotspot to my mobile plan, but I couldn’t find a strsightfiward answer. They ended up sending me to their chatbot who took me round in circles before eventually giving in. Why did that have to be so frustrating? Why did it need ai?

(My kid has poor WiFi in his dorm and his college doesn’t seem to be able to help)

Reminds me of that one time I had to have blood drawn and my phlebotomist was a phlebotomist in training. I've never seen my blood splurt like that

Agree on the chatbot thing but to be honest, it was like that way before LLMs.

There was a full decade where they would just keyword match you to different chat flowcharts.

But how did we get here? We're not suddenly going to start making the right choices. Our choices led us here and they are what keeps us here.

Design is absolutely thriving. Things are made, with great care and precision, to more easily manipulate and mislead buyers and to more easily misinform the population. Most importantly, things are made to more easily extract wealth from everyone else.

What you are assuming, incorrectly, is that the general population is the customer. The general population is, in fact, just another resource for the wealthy and powerful (the real customers).

This CGP Gray video from a decade ago makes the point that when the bulk of a countries wealth comes from a very small area of production/industry - tyranny will soon follow.

When all the wealth comes from a few tech-billionaires (rather than the productive labour of the diverse masses) - the representative/leader/dictator ONLY has to please the small minority who has all the money.

Rent seeking behavior, the thing capitalism is best at :’)

I love when people act like the alternative to capitalism is zero private business and full communism. It’s like, no, the thing before the -ism is simply the thing it centers. Capitalism, as you say, centers capital but after that it can take several forms, all of which suck major ass as they reward nearly any behaviour which makes more money. Even objectively awful shit can just be paid off, it’s insane.

I'm hoping we get to see this taken to a peak of comic absurdity and historical irony. I'm hoping one day we see the Chinese Navy blockade and target London. Why? To force the UK to accept Chinese fentanyl imports.

looks up LifeLock

LifeLock is identity theft prevention software, initially sold by the LifeLock company, and now sold by Gen. The software was marketed as NortonLifeLock after 2017 and is also bundled with several Norton 360 products.

Makes sense :P

Let's not pretend the rest of the world is so much better. I'll concede the US is winning the race to the bottom. This is the winning Trump was talking about.

You're allowed to do your own thing ya know.

Also early stage capitalism as it happens. The middle period can go alright if they're absolutely terrified of being guillotined.

Late stage capitalism

Idk I can see things going a lot further

Late End stage capitalism