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Capitalism
My business works almost entirely organically. We charge a fair rate. Not the cheapest, not the most expensive. We never broke our ethical code. You’d be surprised how many people scoff at me.
As much as everything is a scam, a vast majority of the customers are asking to be scammed. Should I sell the cheapest shit, cash out, and walk away while the work performed for the customer breaks down within a few months?
People don’t get it. Still. It’s mostly the consumer’s fault for not choosing businesses with ethics. People chose quantity. That’s not a decent business person’s fault. Now, we’re here and very few businesses with ethics exist.
Whose fault do you seriously think that is? The person with the money who always had a choice where they could purchase a product or is it the competing businesses who offer a product? It only becomes the businesses fault when there’s no choice left.
There were choices. Choices were made. Now everyone is bitching about how there’s no good businesses left. So start giving your money to decent people.
It’s just like voting. You vote for the scummiest people. Wtf do you expect? A paradise? You’re not getting a paradise and you’re not getting a good product. You.
Congratulations on being able to run an completely ethical business - it can’t be easy. I say that non-sarcastically.
I think one of the many issue which has lead to the state we are in now is that it’s often impossible to tell the true quality or value of a product before buying it. So simply buying something more expensive is no guarantee of a better product, because the optimal strategy for an unethical business is to sell the cheapest possible product at the highest possible volume x price.
But just like voting the choices you vote for have incentives to rig the system in their own favor. It’s hard to vote with your wallet as they say because the companies are so big they will either lobby for laws to make themselves the only viable option or they will just buy up their competitors.
For example I always try to favor local businesses so when I moved I signed up for the local bank. It was small and had one or two branches. The next year a larger regional ank bought them. Then a larger national bank bought them. Next thing I knew it was bank of America somehow.
I would have never voted for any of that. So it’s not really the fault of the consumer
Yeah. This person’s (who you are replying to) industry does not represent every industry.
It’s literally the bad future from BttF2
Complete with Trump-as-Biff-as-Trump.
Biff wasn’t a pedophile who murdered kids though.
… that we know of.
He was literally ready to murder Marty
I mean, Trump didn’t fuck or murder children onscreen either.
Or maybe he did and it’s not public.
I mean, Putin probably has those tapes to hang over his little puppet.
Check out the UK.
It will get worse. And China will take advantage of it, they’re not stupid, it’s a no brainer when you have all of the manufacturing and industry and your competition has none.
We set a trap and fell in it
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.
I, for one, support our Chinese Overlords. 谢谢你
(I’m fine with USA no longer being Amazon World Police ™)
I’ve ranted about this for years. I’ve had a bad streak of luck the past 8 years, and everything I’ve tried to do to improve my situation has just become an increasingly horrible cesspool of predatory horseshit. Every computer application, service, university, and social program is so much worse than they were 10-15 years ago, and I hate it.
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.
Equally fitting if the word of the year is “Clauding™: to leverage Anthropic™ intelligence tooling to simplify your life and maximize you potential. Brought to you by Anthropic™! Get your free trial today!”
Sure wish Americans would do something about this so the rest of the world doesn’t have to suffer.
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.
Haha! Sure. You believe what you want to. But the fact is that there are countries in the world that are actively battling this scammy rubbish. Through governments and local leadership. What is concerning however, is the attitude that scams are just now a part of the accepted narrative. When they should be anything but.
Take the Nigerian scams of the early 2000’s. They were successfully fought against on all levels. And have now pretty much dropped off.
Just because your country has thrown in the metaphorical towel. Don’t lump the rest of us with you.
I didn’t. I said it as a warning to the countries that are following the path, and some are. If yours is in good shape, then great, keep it that way.
Also, I don’t associate countries and the ones in control with the people who live there. It’s not some team sport where all represent, most citizens of a place don’t have all that much control over what their country does. Most of us are born into a place and system that we have to live in and can’t change. That’s not throwing in the towel, that’s just knowing you can change some things directly around you, but you can’t change everything, so you have to adjust the best you can.
The rest of the world is largely getting their cues from the US, though. I wish they wouldn’t, but with the massive presence of US media and popular culture, the propaganda hits more than just the US.
with the massive presence of US media and popular culture
Look to the billionaires, the Epstein class, for who’s to blame for that.
Almost a quarter of American adults have never traveled abroad. Only another quarter has been to 5 or more countries. Americans, by and large, only understand the world outside of their own country in the terms American media presents it to them.
A quarter going to 5 or more countries feels incredibly generous.
Hell a quarter never traveling also feels like a huge under estimate.
Granted, unlike, Europe, we aren’t all a 30 minute drive from another country.
It’s not a quarter of all people, just adults and Canada and Mexico are both pretty easy for a lot of Americans. Plus cruises and/or resort trips to the Caribbean and there’s plenty of people who have “been to another country” without ever having really experienced another country.
This is so true…so many have zero world view
I’d have to drive almost 1500 miles to reach a “foreign country” (I’m not counting Canada, which I’ve visited a bunch of times) and the structure of our government means all foreign relations goes through the Fed over which I have negligible influence. And that’s coming from someone with a dim view of patriotism. We are physically and geopolitically isolated in a lot of ways, not least of which is the cost (material and opportunity) of travel. It’s a lot of work for no obvious benefit to keep abreast of current affairs around the world.
no obvious benefit
Traveling is probably the best thing you can do to not be a complete shithead about 90% of things in life.
A criticism of “MAGA” I have made is, “why settle for great when we were amazing?”
You’re allowed to do your own thing ya know.
Unless you do your own thing too much and the CIA takes interest.
Late stage capitalism
Late stagecapitalismIdk I can see things going a lot further
Also early stage capitalism as it happens. The middle period can go alright if they’re absolutely terrified of being guillotined.
The stock market is both. No …?
Depends on who you are.
Broke-ass everyday American? Gambling.
Rich-ass spoiled-brat insider-knowledge-having-dick multi-millionaire? Fraud.It’s a rigged game, so fraud
Innovation these days is just “what if I was able to somehow insert myself into this already functioning service and skim some money off it”.
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.
Capitalism since…ever. Regulation is the only balance and that no longer exists.
And now AI is inserting itself in the insertion!
Just ask AI to make your Door Dash order for your Pizza delivery driver.
There’s a cute little novel about that: “Automatic Noodle.” Except in that one, a bunch of sentient robots can do Biang Biang better than an algorithm.
Using your Account® Account™ (one Account™ for all your accounts) in the App® App™ (one App™ for all your apps)!
Can you imagine if there was somebody out there so monumentally stupid that they thought that an app, let’s call it “X” hypothetically, that did everything was a good idea?
He got the idea from the Chinese. All you need is complete control by the government to force it upon everybody. So fascism, which is exactly what they are working towards.
I believe the term is “rent seeking behavior”.
Capitalism bitch! Where the ONLY metric for anything or anyone is how much money can it make.
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.
It always was.
Just stop buying things. Prepay for phone service every month. Don’t sign contracts. Minimize any potential interaction with corps.
Rather than “stop buying things”, maybe “stop subscribing to things”? There’s almost nothing that requires a subscription that is actually necessary or particularly beneficial to a comfortable life.
Buying food, for instance, is probably a practical choice for most people. Subscribing to yet another service streaming mindrot isn’t.
The only ‘subscriptions’ necessary are water, power and heating.
Outside of farming your own food on owned land, (never mind property taxes) how exactly could someone live without buying shit? “Stop buying things” is not a option for most people in most places of the world.
Dont get me wrong, it sucks and im down for the revolute but right now, no.
“Stop buying things” is really just saying “buy fewer things.”
- Do you need it?
- Do you have something already that works in it’s place?
- Can you buy it used?
- Can it be repaired?
If the answer to those is “no”, then go ahead and buy what you need. Exhaust the no-buying options first. Good advice even outside the enshittification conversation.
I mean stop buying extra shit.
YouTube asked me to upgrade to premium… to download my own fucking video!
You gotta out scam the scammers.
Oh! I tried to explain to a friend today why LifeLock isn’t actually providing him with any useful service today and he just couldn’t understand why their “piece of mind” bullshit is all a scam.
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
