@chris
The colonialists and imperialist never left. Any country that tried for equality and decency got immediately couped by CIA or some European government (now China's in on the act). The mining oligarchs, etc., are the new imperialists. Must have our cheap resources. Otherwise, capitalist model doesn't work.
@nicholas
Always hilarious when big government authoritarians blame the ills of big government authoritarianism on 'capitalism'. Capitalism is the free market, it doesn't need government force to work, its very definition is the absence of government interfering in the trade of goods and services amongst willing adults. In fact, the most brutal regimes in the history of the world were formed explicitly to eradicate capitalism, but the incentive for people to voluntarily work together to their mutual benefit is so strong it found a way to survive in the midst of Stalin's USSR, the Khmer Rouge, Mao's China, and North Korea, despite staggering penalties if caught. Supply and demand is not 'an economic system' that can be discarded like a suit that has fallen out of fashion; it is a law of nature as immutable as gravity.
@wowaname @chris @nicholas @gerrymcgovern Lately, I've been thinking that those "Late Stage techniques" are a result of the Ford v Dodge ruling which requires all publicly-traded companies to prioritize shareholders above all else. Just look how Valve is able to prioritize long-term growth because they are not publicly traded. Honestly, I think the situation would be much better if the Ford v Dodge ruling was repealed, even though I think it's unlikely to happen anytime soon.
The ford dodge thing is kind of dumb because you can always argue that you're "building brand value" and that's basically impossible to say you're not. All of the stupid ESG / DEI stuff is done under the "brand value" banner.
The reason for enshittification is because stock market investors want to flip a quick buck so if your earnings report doesn't show you're making a ton of money right now, they're gonna chuck you on the side of the road and go look for something else to gamble on.
Thing is, investors watch those quarterly reports, and so if you want investors to like you, you still have to book maximum short term profits.
Arguably though, "want investors to like you" is simping so that's the actual problem.
>Don't read into it too much
i'm not really. i mentioned consumerism because brands have become a sort of language to these loyal zombies who will just buy bullshit without consideration for decrease in quality over time. i thought that was in agreement with what you're saying
The shareholder duty thing does come up, but only when you're doing really egregious stuff like funneling money out of the company to completely unjustifiable side projects.
Yup, enshitification is literally the law, but muh capitalisms!
Also note that the limited liability corporate structure itself is a government fiction (invented by the British government for the east india company), not a market innovation. There is no capitalist mechanism to privatize profits while socializing liability, so in a true free market you would probably not even have megacorps to begin with, because the liability load would be a natural limiting factor.