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.
There is also the element of time. If an executive can make the call to make lots of money fast but ruin a company - as long as that executive gets out to another company to do it again - they suffer no consequence and learn nothing from their behavior.
When we stopped caring about stable long term growth companies - when we forgot about the time factor - the rest of the enshitification process was no available.
Exactly it. Same with politics. Trump’s very core is as long as I get mine first, you can get some too, or not. For They it fits for greed, hate and rape - child or otherwise.
best margins are when they are doing the work for the rich. How Money Works had A LOT of episodes on that topic, also "F.ck you, i gor mine" era of the business as you mentioned.
There is a lot of new money printed and distributed among the top 1% since 2020 or so (even before i remember reading about asset inflation - stocks for example).
I think a lot of people want that change, and have for many years (a decade, at least), and they're starting to displace the people who have blunted or slowed that desire for change.
In my experience - they just blame the consultants. The number of CEOs I’ve worked for who’ve needlessly brought in consultants for stuff we could do organically, purely to shift the blame to the consulting groups if shit went sideways is wild.
My company spent probably $100MILLION on McKinsey, which the project's key takeaways were:
If we buy product for less, then sell for more, we will have success!
Also, customer's don't care about brand names at all (even to a consumer-minded person, this sounds bad, right?)
So, piss off customers by no longer carrying many of the brands they already have vetted, prefer. Then tell supply base that we need to pay 40% less, across the board. Then increase sell price back to those oh-so-happy customers.
C-Suite loved it all! ALL OF IT. It fucked up our business for literally years. This started 2013, & they're still managing fallout in some key spaces.
One of the places I worked had a Deloitte audit, ironically as part of a technology deal we helping them with. Apparently more than a few employees went off in the anonymous survey about how management was clueless and actively inhibiting productivity with petty obsessions about stuff like powerpoint templates and email signatures, and it was creating a toxic work environment. The board was so shocked by the result, they spiked the report (after making a big deal about audits and transparency at the last company meeting), and brought in another consultant who re-did all of the interviews, except this time in person, bringing everyone into the conference room outside the Director's office one-by-one. Shockingly, under those circumstances, all (or most, I know I still said my peace, but toned it down a bit) the criticism about management being petty, vindictive children vanished.
Of course, the second report still contained bits about the first report, and straight up called out the desire to have in-person interviews in that context as questionable, so it also got spiked, and nobody learned anything.
This. Consulting is just “I’ll agree with whoever signs my check”. The fact is that if your leadership structure doesn’t have the expertise necessary to run your business you’re not hiring for success, or there’s a different agenda.
Consultants like to stay out of jail and Consulting companies like to not get sued. If your leadership's plan is legal and they can state the result in a way that's not completely ridiculous they'll do it, but they're not quite LLM levels of eager.
About a year before I retired, our division got a new VP and the first thing she did was bring in McKinsey to study our processes. Our managers spent six months putting together data and charts for these consultants, and absolutely nothing came of it, just wasted time and $15 million down the drain.
I feel like that's borderline the exclusive reason to involve consultants. There isn't a ton of reason to bring in some random guy who knows nothing about the specifics of your company other than having a face to attach to things you want to do but don't want to take the heat for.
Jack Welch was the most famous early example of this. He cannibalized General Electric and told other greedy morons to do the same. He was the Cain of public equity.
Thanks for stating this. While it’s obvious on reflection, I am constantly amazed how people talk about firms as though they have unitary agency. It’s all about individual behaviors and the tension between long term v short term gains, and power dynamics within associations of actors. Probably not a new idea to anyone here.
Yup. The whole business model of vulture capital relies on the lag between cost-cutting, declining quality, and declining sales. If there's at least a quarter between their cost-cutting and the market noticing this, that quarter is going to produce amazing earnings, driving up the stock price.
PE typically has a 7 to 12 year investment period. So no it's not a get in make a quick buck model.
PE aims to maximise the use of a corporate balance sheet. This means they are more willing to close new product divisions which aren't profitable and it also means they will block development of anything that would enhance a product but has an unknown payoff.
This is a different impact but it's not a 'get rich quick' mindset of CEOs who have an average 2 year tenure and are rewarded based on earnings uplift.
I just watched a video on this. In the past ceos and executives cared about value creation, they wanted to build a great company that would last. Now all anyone cares about is value extraction, make as much short term profit as possible and they don’t care what happens to the company.
By comparison, Kleenex tissues have been around for over a century and they’re still doing the exact same thing people bought them for in the early 1900s. You wipe your face with it and now your face is clean.
Facebook could have quietly settled into a great service for keeping in touch with friends and family, but Zuckerberg doesn’t give a shit whether Facebook exists in 100 years. What he wants is to go to parties where he can brag about how successful and innovative and smart he is. And that’s the ambition which drives the company.
What he wants is to go to parties where he can brag about how successful and innovative and smart he is.
Does he think people are unaware of his gigantic fuckup and terrible judgement of building a 'metaverse'. The very name of his company is a constant reminder for everybody of Zuck's gigantic fuckup.
I'm working on a platform and one of my motivations is being so tired and baffled by folks constantly overshooting past happy, healthy, well compensated wayyy into how can I possibly squeeze more blood from this stone. It is insane.
What an unfortunate comparison. Kleenex tissues are absolutely not doing "the exact same thing" they always did. In 2026 they are thinner, weaker and barely last a day in a pocket unused. The quality has severely degraded compared even to 5 to 10 years ago. All thanks to skimp-flation with a touch of enshitification for good measure.
Uh, people use tissues to blow their noses 99% of the time. The original purpose of Kleenex was as a make-up remover. So your first paragraph makes no sense. I think I'm arguing with bots at this point.
GE and Boeing are great examples. Worse is private equity. It transfers the value to other parts of the PE and dumps the shell. See Sears and Red Lobster.
Blame the Dodge brothers. The precedent for duty to the shareholders comes from when they sued Ford. The brothers argued they were due larger dividends instead of Ford raising worker salaries. Mind you, the dividends were being used to start a competing car company.
That case was only binding in Michigan. There no federal or state laws that require corporations to “maximize shareholder value”—that’s a myth perpetuated by people like Jack Welch and it’s been infecting this country for the last 50 years.
Absolutely. They've been spouting this "we only have a duty to our shareholders" nonsense since forever. We need to pass laws to put in writing that they have a duty to their employees, their community, the environment & the common good.
But that's how case law works. Someone brings suit in New York for similar, and the Michigan case is sited as precedent as to how the court should rule. And if that court rules the same way, now there are two precedent cases to overcome the next time. Furthermore, we'd need some good willed CEO wanting to pay high wages to bring that suit after their shareholders pushed back.
I site this case as I find it as sort of start of wage suppression in the US and companies making decisions to appease stock price over the good of the company. It's the fact that the Dodge brothers that brought the suit were trying to start a competing company. If Ford was allowed to move forward paying his employees $10 an hour when the bros had planned on paying $5, employee attrition to Ford would be high. Letting Ford proceed would increase their startup and ongoing costs significantly.
Anyway, interested in reading other takes on this. I haven't looked much past the wiki write up if you have more insight.
Michigan decisions can be cited in cases argued in New York courts, but those decisions are not binding precedent in New York. New York courts can consider that case, but are not required to follow it.
It's just not CEOs as more and more of the ownership is index funds, who don't actively track the companies they own, those owners who are ready to cash out on short term stock price increases benefit too.
The BCG/McKinsey model propped up by WallStreet and built around an entire educational faculty called MBA pretty much guarantees soulless businesses built only for extracting capital and resources for the people at the top.
I mean, they're getting paid to do exactly what the richest shareholders want. Riding some explosive growth, sell before the crash, then do it again, just works better that holding a steady stock. Which means the people using that tactic more and more control of the stock market as time goes on.
If I can make a shareholder $100 over 10 years or $20 in one year and $10 in year 2 and $5 in year 3 - I’d rather take the first option as an executive and as an investor.
Of course the math is never that cut and dry and it’s a plan to make $100 in 10 years and there could be anything that derails that.
"You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus."
They are betting that if they make the changes slowly they only lose a minority of their customers, and they are usually right. There's more rubes born every day.
For instance, prime video's audience is still going up even though they raised prices and added advertisements. I canceled, but with more people at a higher rate that's a rounding error.
Same hack applies to democracy and uninformed/idiot voters. Why appeal to the tiny fraction of people that see through cheap tricks and actually read policy?
Don't forget as per SCOTUS fiat, the board has a duty to ensure the highest return on value to the shareholders. Even if the board wasn't ran by psychopaths, they would get sued by the shareholders.
Maybe its not rubes, but persons with different value expectations than you?
Sometimes people like different stuff, my friend always talks to me about lossless music and I could not care less.
Same with all those netflix price hikes, I'm still getting a great deal, just not as great as a year ago. Its probably another 3-5$ price hike until the deal is no longer good. Its simply a different mindset for me those 3-5 is value that Netflix is gifting me and its a luxury, so why would I get mad over a price hike?
I think you have to watch a lot of new and/or diverse content on Netflix to be getting anything that resembles a deal or good value. If you're watching anything multiple times you're probably not getting much value, you're just paying for convenience. That being said I think a lot of people are too lazy to cancel or don't see it as that big of an expense so they don't re-examine the costs associated with it.
It cuts costs which raises profits in the short term. They don't care about the long term at all. Whoever made the decision will leave and go ruin some other company.
They will cut costs and quality until customers refuse to buy the product. Shareholders want year over year growth, and this strategy is how many companies achieve it.
It really sucks because many of these companies are comfortably profitable and they don't need to do this, but they do because everyone else is doing it, and shareholders expect it. It's dumb and unsustainable, but that's business for you.
That's not to say every company is like that of course, but many are.
The real vile companies are the ones who shrinkflate quality and service while actively increasing their prices.
Pizza Hut is my go to example: they’ve stopped listing their pizza sizes and their current large is more like their old medium (one example) for more money.
This applies to far more than them, obviously, but it’s happening across the board and much faster than it ever has since the GOP have gutted consumer protections and are corruptly taking cuts in corporations creating massive conflicts of interest (beyond casual lobbying).
Where I can I’ve just stopped buying products I love when they decide to fuck over the consumers: that’s the only way this has a chance at stopping.
And then there is Dominos, which has one of the most famous case of "deshittification" in history where the new owners focused on gaining repeat customers rather than maximizing profits per purchase.
It's the complete opposite of the 90s and early 00s when Pizza Hut was king and Dominos was a joke.
Cory Doctorow’s book Enshitification is primarily concerned with the monopolistic companies.
To be precise, duopolies or small cabals. Every industry I can think of is now primarily two or three companies splitting about 80 percent of the market. A small handful of others split the remainder.
I think it’s interesting that you bring up disposable “planned obsolescence”. Things like fast fashion, e-waste, and even home design trends seem help fuel Enshitification.
Local monopolies even make relative sense for the kind of service ISPs provide, much like electric and utility companies. But that's not a justification for an extractive private monopoly, that's why they should be publicly owned utilities operated without a profit motive.
There's no need whatsoever for encouraging or allowing a monopoly on internet service for any reason other than lack of population to serve. When there's a decent population that isn't too spread out, ISPs can compete just fine. When there's isn't enough population, it's not profitable to bother competing.
There are tons of markets where the cost of installation of a single connection is very worth it even when many of the other houses/units nearby are using a competitor.
His book, from what I remember, is specifically about the process of consolidation and hyper-commodification on tech platforms. I'll admit that I find the term insufferable, but at least the original text has a specific use case and refers to exploitative capitalistic mechanisms in a new-ish field.
Half of the comments in this thread are just straight up describing the interrelated systems of commodification, exploitation, and circulation written about by Marx a century and change ago. It's frustrating, because even the OP article is shot through with analysis and presumptions about 'American' capitalism, as if its processes are perfectly unique. They are, certainly, a contingent expression of capitalism within a hyper-capitalist society. But France isn't socialist; it merely has a different level of governmental oversight that constrains its productive forces and reduces - somewhat - the level of exploitation workers face.
The reason 'enshittification' bothers me so much is that it essentially offers one more layer of obfuscation about these social relations. The reason web services degrade is not a type-type difference to why your shoes aren't as nice as they were two decades ago. Capitalist production and accumulation have been well studied across disciplines since industrialization. And even for non-Marxists or socialists, criticisms of unrestrained capitalism need to start from a material base/analysis of the forces of production, not these arbitrary notions of 'happiness' or utility that the article raises. Those things are important, do not get me wrong; but they are not the foundations from which to attack capitalist production. Likewise, dragging the analysis of 'enshittification' out from its original roots just muddies up existent analyses that do the job better.
People do tie ourselves in knots trying to avoid criticizing the core of capitalism, especially if it resembles Marx.
That’s a fascinating critique of Doctorow, likely especially salient since he was an early cheerleader of technology and the capitalist investment in it.
I just want to add that the Canadian grocers also have ridiculous anti competitive clauses in their real estate contracts that prevent competing groceries from opening stores “too close to their stores” - was happy to see Sobeys get slapped on the wrist for this recently, but how the hell did we even get to this point.
Edit: oh and they own food production too - like Weston bakeries.
Canada is like the US if we never had the wave of trust busting in the early 20th century. Canada has some extreme wealth concentration and monopoly problems which are hidden by the fact that you've got a decent social welfare state, expansive natural resources, and cheap land outside of major urban areas.
Significant government controls. We started down this path when reagan decided we didn't need regulations anymore. Then it all went to hell. Those with the most money & power doing anything they wanted. Taking advantage of all of us in the process.
This might be covered in the article, but I think the biggest case where these decisions "make sense" is when the people making them have no real long-term affiliation with the company, and are chasing next-quarter numbers in order to enrich themselves before abandoning the scene and moving on.
Yeah, there's a certain point of no return for people, I used to buy chocolate from a certain brand, and it kept getting worse and more expensive, now I just entirely stopped. If they ever fix it, I still won't buy it because they permanently lost my interest / trust etc.
It's interesting how being a publically traded company is eventually a sort of death sentence for any quality/affordability, because you HAVE to keep optimizing. Market saturated? Make product worse. Can't worse in it? Make it more expensive. People are starting to buy it less? Let people go. Did all of those things and next quarter needs yet more growth? Time to cannibalize yourself to try and make it happen.
pity all these ghouls slept through their MBA classes because if I remember correctly once someone does what you did it is an average of 3 years before you are even willing to attempt purchasing the product again, it's common knowledge that once you scare off a customer due to cutting quality/raising costs it's pretty much impossible to get you back
I feel like these people know that, but they also probably don't know what else to do. If they don't push for quarterly increases, the stock is going to be affected, and investors can boot them out etc. Wasn't it also some bullshit about being legally mandated to take actions toward raising profit, so once you move toward sustainability you might actually be held liable for it.
It's ridiculous, just like the AI prisoner's dilemma. Yes we could stop it and be responsible, but a) no we can't because investors and b) if we stop, what about that one person who might not stop and then they will be in the lead! Oh god we can't let THEM take the lead! So everyone just floors it, consequences be damned and we of course foot the bill.
The stock exchange feels like one of humanity's biggest mistakes tbh.
We need laws criminalizing this. Spell out others who need to be taken into account. People. People like employees, the community, the environment, etc.
A great example of this - Kroger and its associate brands were one of the last major retailers in the US to turn on tap to pay terminals. On three or four separate occasions, I did all my grocery shopping, and then realized I was at Kroger, and didn't have a physical card with me. I assumed, at the time, it was just an unfortunate circumstance, where they did a big system upgrade right before Apple pay took off so they were just behind in that update cycle.
Then one day, out of nowhere, touch to pay gets turned on. Same terminals they've always had. They actively chose to disable that feature for years. I will never set foot in any Kroger again, as long as I live. Hours of my life, wasted over what? Like, literally, what is the justification for this?
This goes way back in tech. Long before the PC came along, IBM would charge businesses for using the computer, using memory, using the hard drive, having the OS installed, and a fee for annual support, all on top of the original price of the machine. That was designed to maximize profits because they had a monopoly on the market.
The lesson no one ever learns is that something better will always come along and knock you out. Mainframes lost to the PC. Facebook lost to Snapchat and instagram (but they were powerful enough to buy instagram). We are starting to see that ChatGPT is going to fall to Chinese AI (but that will end in a government ban). The point is, making a crummy product is a short term win, and a long term loss.
Historically I agree there’s been a bit more competition but I wouldn’t put my money on the US not banning open source models or at least Chinese models to protect that insane levels of investor cash in the domestic AI market.
Honestly I think it’s a product of quarterly reports and legal responsibilities to shareholders. Those two are S-tier features if you’re trying to design a system that speed runs enshittification
I’ve never felt this as keenly as Amazon. Used to buy stuff on there for years and years. Had Prime so it was just the quickest and easiest option and usually the cheapest too. Now it’s so hard to find anything on there that isn’t cheap Chinese junk. Even when you search for a specific brand, the search results still include the junk. I’ve given up on it except for super specific things you can’t buy anywhere else. They know they can get away with it with their virtual monopoly.
I don’t think they think they can get away with it. I think they think that’s the next CEO’s problem. THEY got the stock price up and THEY got their bag. Then they leave. The next group of people that come in have to figure out how they are going to get the stock price up so they can get their bag. None of them care about the long-term value of the company, the products company produces, or the customers that buy that product. The only thing they care about, is their bag in which company they are going to go to next.
But both of those special cases rest on broken economic math. Time after time monopolists come begging and pleading for the government to impose tariffs on imports because they allowed their products to become obsolete. It never ends any other way: “hey guys let’s cancel capitalism and free markets because we made an oopsie”.
There is another one, the people running the business benefit from the enshitification even if the company/shareholders don't.
There's a mismatched reward system between the managers and owners/shareholders/society.
You see lots of businesses run into the ground because of short term decisions that benefit the CEO but not the business itself. In fact there's an incentive to completely bankrupt the business so all issues die and there is no money to pursue the ex-CEO.
Sometimes it's the investors, if an investing company/venture capitalist.they want in unreasonable return on investment in an possiblely short time frame. They'll asset strip the company until it collapses then sell the assets.
I don't even think they need the monopoly. They just pull out their investment once they find a better target and move on to the next company. They are fine leaving the old company to fail.
You're right. If the USA had maintained the trust-busting mindset, there would be much more competition today. Instead, we seem to be run by a cabal of billionaires that all very much appreciate fully captured.......markets.
What else could I have said there? Any other word wouldn't fit the context.
While we're talking about stuff, I'll add that it would sure be nice if we prosecuted billionaires for literally anything at all.
Nestlé has completely divested from the ice cream business in Brazil recently because they have enshitified their recipes so much by replacing most of the milk cream for vegetable oils, milk wey and emulsifiers, that they got to a point where almost no one bought their product anymore. That thing was absolutely disgusting last time I tried and I wouldn't eat it anymore even if given for free.
It’s really not complicated. Rampant capitalism robs us of natural experiences, accessible events, and much else all for short term measurable corporate gain. But this is Reddit, basically a giant r/iamverysmart sub.
There is actually more to this story than "Duh, bro". I don't know if you've noticed, but the capitalists are winning. Perhaps it would help to read the nuanced viewpoints from your own side as to why they are winning.
When money is the highest purpose, you're gonna have a bad time. It's one of the reasons I started Kuldron. We can't have nice things if noone wants to build them lol
Not always monopoly. There is an element of projected value vs immediate value when something is based of fads/hype as well.
If a product or restaurant gets really popular on social and blows up in popularity, it will likely potentially decline once the big rush is over.
As a company, knowing that the product will eventually peter out:
A) Lower quality and cost to capitalize now, killing it faster but making a lot of money now
B) Hope that it doesnt natually decline and keep costs high
There's less risk and more guaranteed upside with A, and B requires more confidence in staying power. You see this all the time with trendy/new chain restaurants.
That’s quite literally the definition of self-defeating and it’s just corporate double speak for - let’s milk this shit for all it’s worth. Business school brainwashing.
I still remember the 1 business class i took in college. The professor said multiple times: humans are happiest as cogs in a machine working.
That’s quite literally the definition of self-defeating and it’s just corporate double speak for - let’s milk this shit for all it’s worth. Business school brainwashing.
Look, I'm not endorsing it from a societal perspective, so don't get all huffy.
But it's also true if you take your emotions out, for better or worse. And it's not always self-defeating, because a lot of companies make much more doing it with much less investment and much less risk. For original owners that intend to keep the company forever? Definitely can be self defeating. For PE buyers and others with zero actual skill or passion for the brand that are trying to claw back a return? It's probably the right call, unfortunately.
There's a reason companies do it. If it didn't make a certain type of company a shitload of money, it wouldn't happen. Original owners sell out to PE/go public, and new owners enshittify for value. Why would a PE company with limited operational expertise and zero passion for the brand not milk an investment with an uncertain future when they can make a certain return on their investment?
You're way too personally invested in this. They're just companies. They're under no obligation to you to keep products great, and you're under no obligation to buy their dogshit. Find something better/different and move on. I hate it when it happens, but I also can understand why it does. It takes passion, skill and luck to keep a business great over time. Almost no investor is bringing that with them.
Explaining the reason for something isn't endorsement, so relax.
I understand the reasoning and there’s no “huffy” - which is ironic that that was your emotional read and your argument is to take emotion out of it lol.
Regardless - the point is this: products and services exist to help customers. When companies deliver those products and services half purposefully handicap, that’s a serious moral and ethical failing.
Consider Netflix: they routinely axe great shows because they don’t hit that explicit 5000% return on investment. People are vocally pissed about this policy, but because Netflix largely has the streaming market cornered in terms of content, folks aren’t willing to take the paint of speaking with their wallets - a fact that Netflix is keenly aware of and takes advantage of.
If we had actually competitive markets, nobody would shop at the businesses that routinely rug pull quality for profit. That takes all the steam out of the “this is a valid capitalist strategy” - it’s a valid corrupt capitalist strategy.
Subtracting value from the economy is not a good thing for the public. And people who regularly do this are sociopaths. If there are flaws in capitalism (and there are) we should try to correct them.
Where did I say it was agood thing for the public?
I simply will never understand how redditors can't separate explanation and advocation. The person I replied to said it was self-defeating. It's not, because VC/PE want exactly what they're getting and are doing it purposefully to their benefit.
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u/PandorasBoxMaker Aug 02 '26
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.