It was a general statement. While I do mean it, pedantry with it when reasonable think dictates that exceptions may not be applicable literally makes little sense.
Also, it more means that no business starting out today. I don’t mean long existing ethical businesses that are obviously doing well for themselves and their users.
Nothing should always be taken 100% literally 100% of the time but should be understood reasonably within the understanding of ones lived experience.
I consider myself a well traveled person and disagree with this completely.
In the contrary, business who listen to their customers tend to do well long term.
Easy examples are the restaurant industries. How many restaurants that you went to that were excellent at first and 10 years later were now terrible because they franchised and wanted more money? At the opposite, how many restaurants you went to that 10 years later are still great and fair? Both can exist at the same time.
Enshittification is a choice.
Yes. But their customer base changes after a while so the customers who made the business are left with nothing. Example: Amazon and MSFT. That’s literally a enshittification from the company’s end against the private users and customers (the average person).
Pre COVID and AI world, I would have agreed. But things have changed so much in the last 10 years that I don’t believe this to be true anymore if one is to stick with the economic system in place and take it to extremes.
It should be a choice. But no new business today fares well if they don’t adopt shitty policies to gain customers by manipulating and tricking them into spending more. This is like saying, smoking or drinking is a choice for addicts. No. It’s a slippery slope if they do it and they can’t stop. It’s a disease. Enshittification is the disease born out of extreme levels of greed.
I fear you may be right. But I still think we should keep fighting for a better world.
I don’t know if any of you have heard of or seen the show The Good Place, but I’m about to spoil it so you have been warned.
SPOILERS FOR THE GOOD PLACE!
The show is about people in the afterlife. It turns out that less than .0001% of people on Earth make it to heaven, even the most ethical people who are trying their absolute best to be good. The reason is because we created a world where everything we produce is directly or indirectly linked to some kind of oppression or exploitation.
If you buy a cheap pair of scissors, you are contributing to the labor exploitation of kids in China. This example was literally used by real European politicians who advocated for protectionism because a pair of scissors made in their country cost €17 euros, and a pair made in China cost €2.
The argument The Good Place was making, and they were certainly not the first, is that even when you buy something that was made “ethically”, it is likely that it is indirectly linked to exploitation, even if it’s way down the production chain.
The clothes you are selling may have been made ethically, but was the plane they were transported on made ethically? You get the point.
That’s the world we created, but again does not mean shouldn’t keep fighting for fairer one.
I don’t think you need to be well travelled to come to this realization. I think a lot of working class and middle class people who’ve never left their country have come to it, especially since the 2008 financial crisis, and that number continues to grow.
This is the world it always will end up becoming because it is a default byproduct of again… strictly following the rules of the economic system that is capitalism.
Listen.. with all these comments, I don’t mean nor believe capitalism is to be blamed for everything. You can consider it the best worst system we have in place for something to work well for all. But the extremism with and within it is what I am objecting to and against.
It’s like life. You are born only to eventually die. It’s the natural byproduct of any living being/creature. It must happen. There is nothing changing it. It will happen.
Analogously, naturally flawed human nature will take any system that works and try to make it as efficient as possible in the name of improvement and betterment (of the company and its shareholders/owners) as long as it is following and abiding by the agreed upon economic system we have agreed to live with - even if said improvement and betterment does not extend to people living in society in/to which it is also meant to serve.
Please explain how.
Same here. Please develop more.
If you adopt shitty policies from the start, no customer will join or use your product / service.
YOu want me to explain how bad things have become in the last 10 years? Sorry. I can’t. I don’t have the energy nor the inclination to at the moment but it doesn’t mean my point I am trying to make isn’t valid. If you have to ask.. then you have much to read and learn which cannot happen through an internet forum. I don’t know how old you are and where you’re from but I encourage to seek this knowledge elsewhere.
To the degree that the world without capitalism has existed longer than the world with it, things can always change. It will take a long time, but it can change, and it is worth fighting for that change even if you won’t see it in your lifetime, you kids lifetime, or your grandkids’ lifetime.
I understand.
Yeah.. when the biggest weapons were muskets and cannons. Not in today’s world they can’t. Economic policies can and are imposed by at the very least a show of firepower, however subtly.
I’m asking because I do have knowledge in this exact topic and I’m curious on to how you arrive to these conclusions.
It’s also ok if you don’t want to develop more and just state opinions without providing where it’s coming from.
And this is in no way a sneak attack lol, really don’t develop further if you don’t want to, it will spare me from developing further 
By the powers of observations.. and reading books.
I disagree.
There are some people who believe capitalism can be dramatically curbed and work for everyone. Others, think capitalism needs to be get rid of entirely and replaced by a new system because it is inherently bad.
Both are extremely hard to achieve. The latter is infinitely harder.
I don’t believe either are impossible. But they are hard enough for many people to believe that neither are achievable. But that doesn’t mean they are not worth working toward.
Because things always change whether we do nothing or fight back. The Overton window on people’s opinions about capitalism has significantly shifted over the last 2 decades. What was once considered impossible, is moving closer to the possible.
Capitalism isn’t the problem though. Capitalism provided us with growth which gave the birth of so many great products and services.
The issue is unsustainable growth where expectations are for infinite amount of growth from stock holders, where you have legal obligations as a company to make the stock holders happy. The only way to satisfy this greed is often only by cutting down costs which often translate to people getting fired, attrition (not replacing people leaving) or quality (think food as it’s easier to understand).
This is a gross oversimplification, but yeah, I’m not sure replacing Capitalism with anything else is the magic solution. People are fed up and point more and more to the system most democracies are using as the source, i.e. capitalism, but I believe this is misguided.
I respect your position. It’s not surprising that different people have different readings on what the problem is. I was simply pointing out that to some people, capitalism is the inherent problem, not just its excesses. I don’t think they believe replacing it is a magic solution. They just think that better systems exist, even if they may not be perfect.
Grok Imagine just recently slammed the door on its free offering with zero warning. and zero indication that they are going to speak on why. which is frustrating. to compound the issue, their paid tiers also took a massive hit as their limits were severly cut. personally, while i enjoy many of the new ‘service offerings’, i go in mentally prepared to cut and ditch. and the knock-on is that i am far more likely to utterly ignore anything offered by the company in the future. because if that’s the core ethos driving the decisions (screw the client, we do what we want), then market forces should consume it and make way for something that respects is client base. it just becomes impossible when those same outfits are propped up by federal monies or are so damn big, they literally can’t spend it fast enough… which is a dichotomy that makes me shake my head. bottom line: be willing to stand alone while the lemmings froth their way into the dubiously valued ‘future’.