@fribbledom

It's partially economic as people are a lot poorer these days, but it's also that the price-point of automation has dropped through the floor.

@fribbledom I was thinking about it a lot. To me this is a natural evolution of capitalist businesses who, over the XXth century, gradually honed the way to make the most money, and it turned out that aggressive marketing + buying out competitors + subverting industries with a subsidized "free" products, all work better than "honest" competition. Computers helped doing it more efficiently, and the Internet helped to scale it globally.

@fribbledom
And I remember all of those companies getting crushed by Microsoft exploiting the monopoly position it had.

@fribbledom running a solidly profitable company is no longer enough if the company is public. Show hockey stick growth every quarter ( which is impossible) or be punished by the markets. Leads to bad decision making, Netflix being the current best example.

@fribbledom honestly, it’s probably caused by treating companies as assets to be bought and sold rather than institutions that create goods and services.

@alcinnz

Some questions:
- Who creates these products? Some soul-less people or people like you and me?
- Who is interested in making money? Some greedy businessman or people like you and me, e.g. by working for these companies or owning shares of these companies?

I think it's easier than ever to stand up against this shit: don't create these products and buy old/alternative products. I'm very happy with my 2012 Thinkpad

@fribbledom Yeah. I still try to buy quality. But if that's not available or not for a sane price, it's pretty difficult.

@fribbledom Old normal is now called premium.

@fribbledom Probably because people are more deprived in terms of actual income and purchasing power. The wealth of the billionaires is not purely from increased productivity.

@fribbledom it was when anti trust laws changed during Reagan's administration, so now the market isn't based on competition in the same way it used to be. Almost everything you mentioned is now either based on advertising money or big tech shareholders or both. Kinda feels like we're past the point of no return but...I know it doesn't help to just be hopeless. 🤔😟😔 Even when things used to be different though there were just other problems, I guess there will always be problems.

@fribbledom With marketing being able to replace quality with adverts, influencers and "must have" product cult.

@fribbledom it was always that way. capitalism is a mistake. humanity must fall.

But hey, on the bright side, you can get a blåhaj.

@fribbledom it was happening already by the late 90s if not sooner. a friend of mine said they knew dot coms were done when the start-ups they were talking to stopped saying "we're gonna change the world with our product!" and instead said "we're gonna get acquired with our product!"
"The New New Thing" by Michael Lewis (1999) was also a depressing read. - from those perspectives it was internet mania + stock market + marketing. (1/2)

@fribbledom Are you sure there wasn’t just a time when you were naive enough to believe that companies competed on the merit of their product?

@fribbledom
> And on the consumer side? When did we go from "best value for money" to "cheapest whatever it takes".

I used to enjoy domestic plane rides too. Same thing.

@fribbledom Hard to say this without sounding like a snob, but I rarely buy cheapest. I don’t want my crap to break.

@fribbledom Probably because if it's gunna be crap anyway what's the point in spending more?

Vicious cycle.

@fribbledom and what's worse is if the product is defective, chances are you can't refund or exchange because it's no longer available for special order so you have to live with it.

@fribbledom cheapest*
* until you achieve some degree of monopoly, in which case you will start selling garbage at a massive price. (yes, I'm looking at you Autodesk😉)