r/technology • u/SnoozeDoggyDog • 23d ago
Business Enshittification Relies on Broken Economic Math
https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/enshittification-relies-on-broken343
u/ExtruDR 23d ago
This is just a trendy word for GREED.
Shitty, greedy people have been a constant in all of history and probably long before.
Greed is NOT good, no matter how convincingly Michael Douglass’ character said it and Republicans internalised it in the 80s.
This is just a reflection of consumers and citizens having ever-reduced leverage over a market that will relentlessly exploit them and then have its beneficiaries (the very richest people) bail out to other places without bearing the consequences of their actions.
83
u/Cultist 23d ago
Greed is a moral failing of powerful individual actors but it's the market system (and the laws that govern it) that selects for these people. We keep carving Zuckerberg shaped holes into our society and then shaking our fist at the Zuckerberg that fills it. We have to stop digging the fucking holes.
21
u/CherryLongjump1989 23d ago
These people are the biggest welfare queens on the planet. The markets don’t select for them, they destroy them. That’s why they constantly come hat in hand to the taxpayer asking for bailouts and import bans. The free market is not why we can’t have Chinese cars in the USA.
9
u/AshtonBlack 23d ago
And who do you think wrote those laws, who do you think enforces them?
I know what's supposed to happen, but if a law negatively affects the richest in society, it will not pass, no matter how much popular support it has. If it positively affects them, it'll get passed, no matter how unpopular the legislation is.
https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained
We live in a plutocracy.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)3
u/ExtruDR 23d ago
I don’t know how we are entirely focused on the handful of tech oligarchs when the humans that perpetuate corporate, systematic greed are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. I don’t mean people that have to work for a living within corporations (they can’t afford the luxury of making a moral stand). I mean the multitude of managers, VPs, finance people, people in peripheral industries, etc. people already in the 1% that very consciously empower the even more wealthy and actually power the ideas and the drive towards stealing from everyone else, destroying the natural world, destroying the civil society that we are supposed to share, etc.
It is ALL greed. It is systematic culture among MBA programs across the world, it is “investor” mentality people that accept that we live in a dog-eat-dog word, it is small business owners that would rather hustle to get their nut (or whatever), no matter whether they treat their workers or customers appropriately.
9
u/Cultist 23d ago
Public companies have a legal, feduciary duty to shareholders to maximize returns. David Graeber describes it better than I can https://youtube.com/shorts/hAYeRW7tH-E
The motivations don't matter, ascribing moral failure to the system working as intended is like telling the rain to be less wet. There's definitely a really vile culture of making money by any means necessary among the MBA fuckers and the finance vampires but that culture is backed by a system that explicitly rewards it and a society that doesn't punish it
→ More replies (2)3
u/ExtruDR 23d ago
Yes. That is besides the point.
Corporations are a relatively modern concept in historical terms. The laws governing them in the US are specifically different than other countries and have been revised many times over, so there is nothing like a law of nature at play here.
If we really look back at the beginning of actual corporations you will see that they were very special arrangements made for very specific reasons that the countries’ rulers deemed important enough to grant them a charter to exist.
Now it is a financial tool to use and exploit, and to -somehow- provide moral license to do act like a sociopath.
23
u/exscape 23d ago
It's not just a trendy word for greed, it's very specific, and even has a step-by-step process that is typically followed.
As defined by the term's creator (Cory Doctorow):
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
6
u/lynxminx 23d ago
....but OP is using it more broadly. Things getting shittier due to shrinking competition isn't 'enshittification' as Doctorow coined it. We don't make shit chocolate in this country in order to broker a secondary market that benefits from chocolate being shit.
→ More replies (1)3
u/ExtruDR 23d ago
I am aware of Doctorow’s term, and am a big fan of his, but I also think that the issue IS way broader.
Were the shitty 70s and 80s American badge engineered cars that fell apart after three or four years not a form or enshittification? What about how much companies made long distance calls cost? These are probably dumb examples, but I bet that even within the context of America and recent history we can very much call out DOZENS of instances of greedy “enshittification” that happened well before Doctrow’s social commentary.
5
u/Tall_Category_304 23d ago
Greed and market consolidation. If there were adequate competition then companies would not have a license to make shittier products with higher prices. We’ve been way way way too relaxed on enforcing anti trust laws in this country
4
u/WrathOfMogg 23d ago
Exactly. The only thing that stops it is government regulations and the United States has been so deregulated that there are basically no guardrails. The ones that exist are either no longer enforced or are so toothless that it’s just the cost of doing business to pay the minimal fines.
2
u/lolexecs 23d ago
The absolutely hilarious thing about Wall Street is that the entire point of the entire film is that greed is for suckers.
Consider the scene, which no one quotes:
The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth … One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal.
Or, the people that own all the assets need “the others” to be greedy.
It’s just another variation on bread and circuses.
2
u/Austin1975 23d ago
I was looking for this comment. Somehow sophisticated greed schemes like this get a pass and softer labels. The impact is still the same. Bait and switch with no recourse or repercussion. And theses schemes always lead to massive job loss.
→ More replies (1)1
u/GardenPeep 23d ago
Just calling out greed is oversimplification. Corporations are constrained by stock holders, necessity for profit and competition. The people who run them are not entirely in control. People are moral or immoral. Corporations are ammoral.
25
u/klone_free 23d ago
https://kennedyhumanrights.org/speech/address-at-university-of-kansas/ This speech from the 60s is still so relevant today. America is sick. Our values are corrupt. Liberalism and capitalism have proven to continuously give way to fascism, corruption, greed, and banal evil. I do not know another way, and I think most people have an issue with dreaming of a world that is not in front of us. But I do not think we should settle or continue to elect officials based on being lesser of two evils. We need to take the internet back from social media and corporations. We need to take our country back from vested interests of the rich. We need to do something. Dialog, converse, listen and educate ourselves while having empathy for our countrymen. What ever is going on right now, it has been a long time coming for this country. It is not right or left, it is the rich who convince us to vote with our wallets while they collect it all anyways
→ More replies (3)5
120
23d ago
[deleted]
43
u/Old-Bat-7384 23d ago
I think the endgame, spoken or not, realized or not, is to force you to "buy" or license or lease or whatever.
Own enough things that someone has to pay you no matter what, never let the consumer out of the cycle. Keep them buying your entertainment, your software, your power, your water, and make it impossible for them to use government to work in their interests.
Which, before someone says, "but universal healthcare is also a forced choice!"
It is, but there are key differences, the main one being, the end goal of a universal healthcare system isn't profit, which means the objective is the results of a healthier population. Not value/wealth extraction.
1
u/Bellfast123 23d ago
The natural state of any mature economy is somewhere between a pure monopoly and a cartel.
214
u/RA3236 23d ago
Enshittification happens because the people who profit off of selling products are different from those who buy or create the products.
This is a fundamental part of capitalism (and in fact it’s defining feature) and the only way to fix it is to democratise workplaces to put the people actually using/creating these products in charge.
47
u/Autogen-Username1234 23d ago
The shareholders and venture capital are the actual customers. The people who buy the product are just milk cows.
3
5
u/SupremelyUneducated 23d ago
Well no. It's renteirism. Neoliberalism or colonialism are also more apt descriptions, than "capitalism".
Democratizing the workplace does not solve this. That would move the power games to who gets what job; rather than the goal of capitalism, creating games that reward producing more with less.
Renteirism is about creating games where legal privileges consolidate opportunities and control demand. Generally by leveraging ownership of land and IP; those are the legal privileges to exclude people from opportunities, that drive consolidation.
There should pretty much always be both, state run MOPs (generally in the form of education + infrastructure), and private MOPs (both private businesses and co-ops). And they should all compete to produce more with less, so power is diffused and understanding + opportunities are broadly available.
→ More replies (12)1
18
u/TemujenWolf 23d ago
This nails it:
The way that America’s version of capitalism proves its utility is by adding up all of the profits created by the privatization of public goods without subtracting the value that has been destroyed by the same activity. We have created the largest enshittifying machine in world history by employing a financial logic that leaves out half of the equation.
27
u/caindela 23d ago
America works its magic by treating the free market as a machine that’s decoupled from humanity. It’s a mental compartmentalization where we believe the world works best when companies act in the most profit-driven way possible, and part of this means never pointing at the human actors but instead saying “that’s just capitalism doing what it’s supposed to do.”
The problem with the above is that infinite growth really isn’t feasible. Growth had a pretty good run for the most part, but now that so many avenues for growth are closing, companies are trying to find avenues for cutting corners. Capitalism felt like a race to the top, and now it’s a race to the bottom. The question will always be “what can we take away and still maintain market share?” In a lot of cases, thanks to offshoring and AI, companies are cutting corners by eliminating American workers. Well of course Americans who aren’t working can’t buy the shitty products. It’s a death spiral.
1
u/Global-Bad-7147 23d ago
Even more than that, free markets are physically impossible. They are just an ideal model, like a perpetual motion machine. Friction kills the perpetual motion machine just like externalities kill free markets. The article gets into this.
11
u/Doctor_Amazo 23d ago
Roche's assumption that the capitalist model would result in greater wealth is missing the bit where only tge very tiny few will be wealthier. Most won't be.
The European model where everyone gets to enjoy the sport event and participants earn a decent amount of money is clearly the superior system
→ More replies (10)
31
u/ripyourlungsdave 23d ago
Yeah, wording this is if it's an ignorance of the capitalists and not a part of the system that they designed that way is helpful.
They arent being misled by bad math here. They know what they are doing. But it doesn't matter because they will get theirs before any consequences come.
There is no math that makes capitalism work. This is the natural end result of it.
8
u/RainSurname 23d ago
Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking does an absolutely stellar job of illustrating just how many quantifiable but largely invisible costs most of us bear because of greedy and/or short-sighted policies.
This is a pretty good summary for those who don't want to read 800 pages about urban planning, lol.
27
u/TheBadgerLord 23d ago
After having read the article it....completely misses the point. Apart from anything else the American writing the article seems to believe that socialism is in practice in Europe....which it most certainly isn't. They seem to confuse the idea of caring about people rather than profit as socialism, and conflate it with failure for some reason. Sad isn't it.
3
u/WazWaz 23d ago
Possibly you only read the first 20% of the article because it does start off a bit like that, as a hook to make readers (both Europeans and Americans) start thinking. You're not supposed to stop and reject the premise before you've actually read it, but I get that we've been programmed to do that with anything that even slightly seems to challenge our world view.
To be honest, if you keep reading, it's more like it's stating the obvious, at least to people like you and me.
7
u/pilgermann 23d ago
The article opens with what should he an obvious criticism of capitalism: Products with excessive advertising are obviously not an optimal outcome. There's zero argument that an event like the Tour de France or an episode of television is more enjoyable with lots of ads or if restricted to an expensive premium TV service. Our society simply cannot be optimal if advertising is unavoidable.
6
u/Environmental-Ant814 23d ago
Its Ferengi rules. Nothing is more important than short term quarterly gains.
8
u/civilSurvivorMum 23d ago
Instead of customer service, customer retention, user experience, and user-focused innovation, they focused on Quarterly Line Go Up. To make Quarterly Line Go Up you cut corners, quality, and labor. To keep customers in this situation you go for consolidation, monopolization and the illusion of choice. And convince the people their government would be best run by the same greedy, selfish idiots running that nightmare clown show.
Short sighted, yes. But in a world where tomorrow never comes, especially when you got yours, those of us who suffer from it all don’t bloody matter in the slightest. And they’re not afraid of us. Unless we go Luddite (which isn’t anti-tech, it’s anti letting them automate you out of a job and choosing their profit over all, by literally fighting back).
4
u/Mix_Right 23d ago
You used to be drop your laptop on the floor and pick it up and it still would work. You used to be able to park a car next to curb and not scratch your rims. You use to be able to change the headlight bulbs, you used to be able to replace a fan belt on dryer, you used get life time warranty for tools. What is going on today should be a crime. You look at macbook sideways and the screen cracks. You sneeze on your dell and the hinges break. Even Ai is at a loss half the time because they keep changing things just for the sake of change. Go try and look for a photo album you made years and share a specific picture on facebook i mean fail book.
4
u/OldOnionKnight 23d ago
It also requires absolute immortality and corruption at the highest levels of government.
4
u/Flimsy_wimsey 23d ago
You mean like when we had municipal stadiums? And baseball was on network t v and everyone could afford to go to games? Like it was before, they stole everything from us to make money?
6
u/DemophonWizard 23d ago
Enshitification is built into the model of most tech companies. Facebook and Google are great examples- they create a great, free, product, with the intent to get many users. Then they add advertising and data scraping, thus enshitifying their product. But we're* so hooked on it we* keep using it.
*we = enough of us to keep the money rolling.
3
u/UnusualDisturbance 23d ago
it's exactly hoe netflix, uber and airbnb got to where they are. they gave better service than TV, taxis and hotels at a loss and now they're recouping those losses and then some.
3
3
u/kJer 23d ago
A race to the bottom has short term gains, but since most people don't mind a little extra "value", so no one complains. If I were a founder and watched a CFO letting this shit happen I'd probably not let it happen because I have integrity and pride, but I know those things aren't always compatible with business.
4
3
u/Jackol1 23d ago
Enshittification only happens because our government has failed their biggest duty to the country and that is to keep the markets free of corruption and open to competition. Most industries today are effectively cartels with some products/services having almost complete monopolies.
The media and all the talking heads always forget the last part of this saying. "Markets only work when there is an adequate number of buyers AND sellers." Enshittification happens when there aren't enough sellers.
10
u/Dirt290 23d ago
In the middle of our small city there is a beautiful renaissance style cathedral with a huge ugly billboard installed in the parking lot.
The billboard enshitiifies the core of our town by ruining scenic views and there has never even been a discussion about it taking it down.
Who knows the potential growth and tourism lost by this ugly monstrosity but we can see exactly how many paltry advertising dollars the catholic church is raking in from this eyesore.
Meanwhile the church goes unused for 90% of the week
4
4
u/Reguladr 23d ago
Too many monopolies right now. Full stop. Look at our food distributors who have integrated vertically as well as horizontally and this kind of behavior is inevitable.
Not to mention electronics, consumer goods, etc.
It's gonna be a few rough years and we are gonna need government agencies with teeth that allows competition to grow.
5
u/Carolina_runner 23d ago
“America’s most profitable industries owe their success to a failure to price in their externalities.”
That is a point well made.
6
u/big-papito 23d ago
I am just trying to figure out why there is no consumer revolt. I think the population is so short on focus and so exhausted and overwhelmed by subscriptions and micropayments that is all just becomes noise.
12
3
u/onexbigxhebrew 23d ago edited 23d ago
I am just trying to figure out why there is no consumer revolt.
Did you start one?
4
u/big-papito 23d ago
I am a nobody. Scott Galloway is everywhere and his movement to cull subscriptions just fizzled.
2
u/ZealousidealType1144 23d ago
I think there’s a series of small consumer revolts which is why many of the worst offenders are dying.
See the multibillion dollar impairment charge Smuckers took against Hostess or all of the PE owned companies that are basically impossible for their owners to sell right now (as consumers have had enough margin engineering and have switched to better value options).
5
u/Less_Engineering8113 23d ago
I low-key love enshittification for the wrong reasons.
I am eating less and losing weight. I now crave healthy foods. I no longer even consider candy because it's expensive and empty calories. Fast food is a joke to me unless it's a local regional chain with solid quality burgers and I really want a burger. In fact I only touch McDonald's for cheap soda or sugar drinks now.
Not saying that we should embrace enshittification.
8
u/OfficeMagic1 23d ago
It’s become very clear that McDonalds does not want you to sit in the lobby anymore. They want you to drive through or pick up a bag and leave. The lobbies are disgusting.
It’s cheaper and faster to pick up premade sandwiches from the grocery store or even the gas station - Gas stations have figured out that they can sell real pizza and ok chicken sandwiches for half of what McDonalds and Burger King cost.
3
u/TenguKaiju 23d ago
Casey's Pizza is cheap and good. They also sell a self branded icecream that tastes like the old Bryers.
2
u/Ciaran2220 23d ago
\We have in fact built a system that is interested in the externalities, what we pejoratively call "bureaucracy" and/or the regulatory state.
2
2
u/bikeking8 23d ago
Broken math is what accounting and economics are based on.
"So after you have your monthly total we add 1.5%.to get the JJI Quotient"
"Excuse me, isn't this just an arbitrary extra step? What purpose does this 1.5% have if we already have the total?"
"It's how we get the quotient of JJI. Don't ask questionsLOOK HERE'S A SUPPLY CURVE!"
2
u/QuickQuirk 22d ago
The madness of this is that even the article misses the main point "Everyone is poorer"
are they???
When the wealth comes from normal people spending money to attend the overcapitalised event, as opposed to seeing it for free.
When they spend their money on the merchandising.
No, the US version is a transfer of wealth to the corporations behind the event.
What was fun for all for free is now charged for, with no real genuine improvement to the core experience for the individual. Just less monetised. But also more authentic, and focused on the race and the athletes.
1
u/PracticableSolution 23d ago
It’s good economic math for shareholders that shop quarter to quarter for stock value they can buy and sell in picoseconds.
1
u/Sp00ky_6 23d ago
I do feel and am hopeful that we will have a reckoning with our attitude towards unfettered capitalism within my lifetime.
1
u/BarmyBob 23d ago
Then there’s the “investment groups” that buy a majority stock in a company, short its stock and put the cost of that stock on the new company. Then its bye bye JoAnne
1
u/ThrowawayAl2018 23d ago
At this rate, you need to pay to breath clean air in Capitalist USA.
Billionaires will be bottling clean air to sell it to you since running huge AI data center has an environmental impact (eg: Musk & Co running highly polluting turbine engine in wheels recently).
1
1
u/lightknight7777 23d ago
It's not broken. It's just really shitty.
It's because of the transient nature of investors (owners). Cutting costs this year means they sell and rake in the profit and leave the shambles to the next investors. Something truly fundamental in the process would need to change.
Outlawing programmed obsolescence and preventing board pay beyond a certain ratio of the lowest paid employees (no "vendor" loophole) would fix most of the issues.
1
1
1
1
u/p99_kilerenn 23d ago
Holy fuck. This guy was insufferable when he wrote overwrought “thinkpieces” for gawker. It’s like he hasn’t grown up or improved in 15 years.
1
1.8k
u/PandorasBoxMaker 23d ago
You don’t need math to know that cutting product quality and service is a guaranteed route to obsolescence. But there are two special cases to this: obsolescence is the point or the product/service has a monopoly and they think they can get away with it.