No longer science fiction.
Enshittification is the end result of putting profits above everything. There’s a reason why XJ Cherokees are still running today despite being over 40 years old. Their internals were so simple that even the most mechanically illiterate could work on it with basic tools from the hardware store. Something like that wouldn’t be make it past the pitch meeting today.
Simplicity is certainly a thing, but you shouldn’t forget that there’s quite a bit of survivor’s bias in that statement
“But have you considered our ever-rising quarterly profits?!”
Because they are all businessmen. We have made a system where there are no more craftsmen. The car companies are more financial institutions that want their monthly fee, just like your doctor wants it, your washing machine manufacturer wants it.
The same reason why the childhood treats like Hostess Twinkies and cakes and candy bars don’t taste good anymore. I originally blamed my tastebuds for the change, but now I believe it’s the enshittification of base ingredients, squeezing as much nostalgic goodwill and basic cravings for sugar/fat as possible out of ever-lower quality, cheaper basic materials in the name of profit margins, donations to conservative super PACs, and executive yachts.
I was just reading an article about how candy companies are trying to make GLP-1 (Ozempic) resistant candy that is effectively hyper-addicting and restarts the cycle of addiction.
Incredible how bad capitalism is for society and it’s affect on food processes in order to drive needless profits.
That should be illegal, wtf. Actually evil shit. No wonder people love Superhero movies when real life is filled with supervillains with no end in sight.
Oh definitely. Have you read In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts? I’m halfway thru it now and it’s been incredibly eye-opening.
Ah, Coffiest is finally here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants
“In a vastly overpopulated world, businesses have taken the place of governments and now hold political power. States exist merely to ensure the survival of huge trans-national corporations. Advertising has become hugely aggressive and by far the best-paid profession. Through advertising, the public is constantly deluded into thinking that the quality of life is improved by all the products placed on the market. Some of the products contain addictive substances designed to make consumers dependent on them. However, the most basic elements of life are incredibly scarce, including water and fuel.” This in 1952. Mad Men indeed.
I’m just sitting here laughing by myself in my miserable densified cardboard shack I live in.
A quote from the book:
“each sample of Coffiest contains three milligrams of a simple alkaloid. Nothing harmful. But definitely habit-forming. After ten weeks the customer is hooked for life. It would cost him at least five thousand dollars for a cure, so it’s simpler for him to go right on drinking Coffiest - three cups with every meal and a pot beside the bed at night, just as it says on the jar.”
Advertising has become hugely aggressive and by far the best-paid profession.
Didn’t see generative AI slop coming I guess. Money in advertising has been shrinking, at least for small and medium firms.
Ah, finally a reason to upgrade from Windows 7: to make sure the slop really gets into every nanosecond of human existence.
Holy shit, what? You got an article on that?
Everything. Even pet food, I can see the changes, the canned paté my cat enjoyed used to be like a terrine in the can, now it’s a loose watery mess.
Line must go up
Line go up. “Must” implies it wasn’t going up at some point, which is a capital offense.
have you guys seen this crazy movie called idiocracy
That’s not true at all.
In Idiocracy, the president and his cabinet put their smartest people (well, person) in charge with zero pushback and listened to and trusted expert opinion. When a policy failed (Brawndo went out of business and took the economy with it), there was swift punishment for those directly responsible, and when policy succeeded (crops were growing), they quickly pivoted and elevated those responsible. In Idiocracy, the most competent people were put in charge.
What we have is MUCH worse; people stupid and short-sighted enough to destroy everything in the name of ego and greed, and just smart enough to be successful in their destruction of our societies, governments and planet.
I would much rather be in Idiocracy if I’m being honest. At least those people were trying their best; can’t fault them for that.
Lol but dude, the people in our world are trying their best. The problem is that their best is done at the expense of the general population.
Thats a documentary. Not a movie.
At this point it’s more of an overly optimistic look to our future.
That’s not true at all.
In Idiocracy, the president and his cabinet put their smartest people (well, person) in charge with zero pushback and listened to and trusted expert opinion. When a policy failed (Brawndo went out of business and took the economy with it), there was swift punishment for those directly responsible, and when policy succeeded (crops were growing), they quickly pivoted and elevated those responsible. In Idiocracy, the most competent people were put in charge.
What we have is MUCH worse; people stupid and short-sighted enough to destroy everything in the name of ego and greed, and just smart enough to be successful in their destruction of our societies, governments and planet.
I would much rather be in Idiocracy if I’m being honest. At least those people were trying their best; can’t fault them for that.
The main thing about the prevailing circumstances is that it showed idiocracy was way too optimistic. Their eugenics-ish narrative happened over way too long a period of time. We just needed a bunch of billionaires to poison the information supply.
Again, we can blame Nixon and Reagan.
One of the things that corporations learned from the Oil Crisis is that the top executives could keep drawing a big salary even if the plants were off shore. Reagan enshrined the idea that as long as there was some guy in a suit pulling the strings, everything was fine and dandy.
You fuckers thought capitalism was innovation. Enjoy your capitalism while you eat 30 dollar burgers on your 2000 dollar phones made in china that you watch shit tier cult programming on social media with.
Gotta toss your Galaxy Brain T89 next year for the Ultra version with 2000mp selfie cam
Actually it’s your own fault for buying Superproductname. You should have bought Supererproductname. You’d have known this is you’d put in two hours of research only to find out that Supererproductname was discontinued in 1919.
You joke, but staring at the shitty LG LED TV I bought a year ago, I get mad at how much research we have to do these days just to make sure we get the best <PRODUCT> possible for the budget we have.
Not that long ago you could walk into a TV show room, pick the best one they had that you could afford and that was that. We’d have our brand preferences, but by and large we could buy a TV that would last us ten years.
Now, in order to stand a chance of getting five years out of a product we have to do weeks of research, scour a bunch of forums, mentally having to vet out replies that feel like they’re shill accounts. We have to become miniature experts in every field where we need to spend money, and it’s just fucking exhausting.
In my case, I was labouring under the belief that LG make really good TVs. Turns out they make really good OLED TVs, but their LED panels suck balls. So within nine months of buying this panel, the backlight has become patchy as shit, and now I’m having to go through the bullshit of returning it in order to get a better one.
Honestly you still kinda can, just instead of going into the store, go to Rtings and just find the TV that is the size you want, has the features you want, and is currently the highest rated on the site.
They have incredible reviews that go into very minuscule detail which, if you aren’t a TV person, will mostly mean nothing to you. But look at the scores at the top of the review, and read the little blurb to make sure there aren’t any deal breakers for you. And then just order it from whichever big box store in your town has the best deal.
Until they are purchased
“You complain about the price of groceries yet you continue to buy them. How interesting 🙏🏼”
Apparently that book is from 1978. Exercise for the reader: find the similarities between 1978 and now…
X. E. Cution lol
Real question here: is it possible to walk all this back from the edge with more ethical companies? I’m thinking co-ops, Mondragon corps, union shops, etc. Basically build businesses that have motivations other than deepening the pockets of VC’s and the like, yet have some kind of growth trajectory (or federate with other corps) to gradually subsume the market.
I get that massive funding makes certain things possible, like disrupting the market, or aggressively buying your competitors. And yes, the company charter would have to be bulletproof against hostile takeover, buyouts, and enshitification, in order to go the distance. But is that really all it takes, or am I missing something huge here?
Yes, by staying privately funded and not throwing everything away chasing quarterly profits
Basically, it’s about the leadership.
Boeing leadership used to be exclusively the engineers who have worked their way up. They knew the ins and outs of every step, what works and what doesn’t work, and therefore had a huge focus on safety because they weren’t profit driven.
Then they brought in someone who wasn’t an engineer and things immediately went south. I want to be cheeky and say that MBAs ruin everything because that way of management takes everything human out of management. Making that line constantly go up forever is the issue.
So, for a company to produce products that actually work, you need leadership who isn’t profit driven and who actually has experience at all levels of production.
As someone else said, you have to remain 100% private. The second you become publicly traded, that’s it.
Even then, if you want to make a difference in an established industry, you all but require preexisting deep pockets or some extremely disruptive technology that can’t be easily copied.
You then have to remain steadfast in the face of the ridiculous money that will be dangled in front of you to be bought out.
There’s a lot of stars that need to align.
I agree. The environment in which this must function is corrosive to the very idea, hence why I’m asking it openly here. It’s a pretty dense minefield.
I’m no lawyer, but I’ve mused a lot about some kind of legal “dead man switch” that somehow renders the company value-less if it deviated from the intended path. Something built into the company’s charter and founding documents, not unlike some kind of constitution.
I really don’t know if you could.
Having seen OpenAI’s trajectory of becoming a for-profit and not being “Open” in any serious sense of the word, I genuinely think market forces can absolutely pry open any chest they perceive as containing gold.
My personal conclusion is that you genuinely have to deal with human beings. Take federation for instance: we can try to decentralize these things and make an incredibly solid system, but we still depend on people coming to the realization that this is a good idea and adopting it for their personal/professional internet use.
Now I’m wondering if there such a thing as a decentralized private company? I can’t think of anything beyond having subsidiaries in different countries, but that still requires a parent or at least a main point of contact in the form of the owner. So we’re back to humans.
Graphic is missing images of computers & smarty-pants phones
Fucking. Like me need vehicle yet my dad as a 2021 truck that already needs a new transmission. My 2007 I already put 8k in to keep running but can’t do it anymore. Any fucking newer vars that just fucking run?
Its almost like low taxes and loose monetary policy leads to share buybacks and shittier products as the CPI reports rapid deflation and more share buybacks with debt accrual.
Hmm, let’s see, thanks to DEI, corporate America has spent the last 15 years hiring people based on their race instead of their qualifications, and you’re saying everything is starting to fall apart?
Curious.
Are you sure about that? Are you really? Because I’ve noticed a lot of CIS gendered Europeans at most of the high end engineering jobs I work at.
Well, someone has to do all the work to cover everyone’s paychecks
Have you ever seen the qualifications of DEI candidates? People always say DEI, but always leave out the part that their resumes are often the best.
So we agree that America has been hiring based on race, and I’ll even go further and say its been for the last 250 years - but it’s for whites. Being white is not a merit-based qualification.
Also you think America has only been falling apart for the last 15 years? Did you just forget 1985-1993? This is a troll account, but at least make the bait believable - it’s pathetic.
I keep clicking on the profile link when I see an astonishingly stupid take expecting it to be someone from the most recent reddit migration wave and I can’t believe how often I’m wrong. How haven’t we bullied the racist dipshits off the platform even after a year+
Nice try, Satan. Unfortunately, I already made a meme portraying you as a soyjak and me as a chad, so your argument is invalid.
Man, you only talk in buzzwords, it’s actually embarassing.
fuck off fash
“Diversity, Equity, or Inclusion”, which part don’t you understand? Companies encouraged different perspectives so they could reach a broader scope of people and make more money. No one’s hiring an inferior candidate to do worse work lol.
Now, using cheaper parts, subscription services for everything, customer lock-in, soldered-on, unrepairable parts, focusing only on short-term profits, removing survices while increasing prices… That race to the bottom all definitely contributes to this current “profit at all costs, screw the consumer” environment…
If DEI made companies more money it wouldn’t have to be legislated, would it. Anyone with a smidge of business sense would absolutely crush it by hiring all the people that racists routinely overlook.
But it…didn’t have to be legislated, and wasn’t. MAGA and racists and Republicans made inclusion policies the bogeyman scapegoat for everything. You know, like someone who would make a false statement such as “corporate America has spent the last 15 years hiring people based on their race instead of their qualifications”. That was never a thing.
Also, I said “they could reach a broader scope of people”, it’s not just about the money. Companies weren’t required to implement these policies, they simply benefitted from them. And not always in terms of metrics like profits you can easily prove are the direct result of these policies. Amplifying voices and perspectives to reach people your company might not otherwise is valuable, but you can certainly run a profitable company without doing it.
Last thing I’ll say is all your comments mischaracterize diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, either ignorantly or intentionally. Please stop watching Fox News…
But it…didn’t have to be legislated, and wasn’t
Oh, weird. What’s this, then?
deleted by creator
I always appreciate another name to add to the block list. Get thee gone, thou vitriolic waste of bytes, thou fallacy-made-manifest, born of what can only be an unloving and deeply stupid progenitor.
If blocking me is the only argument you have, I’m afraid you have no argument at all.
Also, you’re proving that diversity and inclusion doesn’t work without excluding some people whose opinions you disagree with, which is by definition the suppression of a minority.
Minorities by choice are not the point. Nobody chooses to be black, trans, disabled, etc - but people do choose to be exclusionary.
Nobody chooses to be white either.
Ultimately irrelevant but true
