I feel like the author correctly identifies the problem - what he calls the rot economy - but I find his solution lacking. This isn't something we can fix bottom-up, with, pardon the exageration, "good guys in tech companies".
The author barely mentioned the stranglehold Big Tech holds over the white house, which is now more apparent and concerning than ever. Things don't turn to sh*t automatically, real anti-trust and definancialization policies need to be passed, to stimulate this clogged up economy. But this isn't a goal of the current administration, so don't expect things to change anytime soon.
silexia 33 days ago [-]
The core of the problem is "fractional reserve banking". This is what allows incompetent elites to gain control of formerly great businesses like Google and Microsoft.
The way it works is that elites give their banker buddies the special ability to loan $20 for each $1 in deposits they get. This effectively allows them to gamble with the $20 and if a stock price goes up, they win big. If it goes down, no big deal because they socialize the losses with the "limited liability company".
These legal Ponzi scheme mechanisms mean that competent founders of businesses are bought out by being offered too much money to say no to by people who should never have had it in the first place. Those businesses are then run into the ground.
zippothrowaway 32 days ago [-]
Ed, ironically, needs an editor.
react_nodejs 33 days ago [-]
It is so funny, how he talks about bad software in his website, while the website itself is exactly the bad software he desribes.
Billions of popup banners asking for money, that make the article unreadable, lol.
klum 33 days ago [-]
I agree with this article. I just want to add one thing: the author mentions companies in general, CEOs and the media as culprits. I'd like to add the people working at those companies.
Few of those might be actively looking at graphs and deciding to make the product worse for the sake of short-term revenue increase. Yet every act of enshittification takes people to make it happen. Those who "just work here", who may be slightly uneasy with adding another popup or displaying more ads but still do it, actively contribute to the problem. That's a decision they make. Even if those employees feel they are doing this only to keep a roof over their children's head or something along those lines, it's worth pointing out there's a choice being made.
This is especially worth mentioning as I think there are rarely actual evil masterminds — most enshittification is a result of tens, hundreds, thousands of people incentivized to repeatedly do things that are just a little bad.
The author barely mentioned the stranglehold Big Tech holds over the white house, which is now more apparent and concerning than ever. Things don't turn to sh*t automatically, real anti-trust and definancialization policies need to be passed, to stimulate this clogged up economy. But this isn't a goal of the current administration, so don't expect things to change anytime soon.
The way it works is that elites give their banker buddies the special ability to loan $20 for each $1 in deposits they get. This effectively allows them to gamble with the $20 and if a stock price goes up, they win big. If it goes down, no big deal because they socialize the losses with the "limited liability company".
These legal Ponzi scheme mechanisms mean that competent founders of businesses are bought out by being offered too much money to say no to by people who should never have had it in the first place. Those businesses are then run into the ground.
Billions of popup banners asking for money, that make the article unreadable, lol.
Few of those might be actively looking at graphs and deciding to make the product worse for the sake of short-term revenue increase. Yet every act of enshittification takes people to make it happen. Those who "just work here", who may be slightly uneasy with adding another popup or displaying more ads but still do it, actively contribute to the problem. That's a decision they make. Even if those employees feel they are doing this only to keep a roof over their children's head or something along those lines, it's worth pointing out there's a choice being made.
This is especially worth mentioning as I think there are rarely actual evil masterminds — most enshittification is a result of tens, hundreds, thousands of people incentivized to repeatedly do things that are just a little bad.