Is everything becoming "enshittified"?
Is everything becoming "enshittified"?
Not just websites and online services but games, stores, restaurants, etc are they? Have you noticed significant quality reduction with nearly matching price increases?
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Yes.
Enshittification, as Doctorow defined it, is really just a particular version of a much broader dynamic, and it happens, and is happening, to nearly everything on which a profit can be made. And if you expand the definition even more, it actually happens and is happening to nearly everything by which one is rewarded for providing value to others.
Broadly, what happens is that self-serving scumbags gravitate to and come to hold positions of authority in organizations, then arrange things to maximize benefit to themselves. They do that in two general ways - by shaping the organization so that self-serving scumbags like them can prosper, and by chipping away at everything of value that's offered by the organization while running up prices as much as possible, in order to maximize the benefit to themselves.
Just as it happens, as Doctorow noted, with social media, they depend on market dominance, name recognition, political patronage, regulatory capture and the like to ensure that they can retain their market share even as they offer consistently less value for more money, so they can pocket more themselves. And since the organization is shaped to allow them to get away with that (they deliberately move away from likely earlier held virtues like focusing on quality, value, integrity, and the like - the things for which the organization was rewarded back when they were starting out), steadily more and more self-serving scumbags come to hold positions of authority, and the broad dynamic gets ever more entrenched.
It happens with all consumer goods and services sooner or later, from television to cars to breakfast cereal.
Notably, it also happens wth organizations like charities, advocacy groups and unions - as they become more influential, they can and do shift from providing a service for which they're rewarded to rewarding themselves ever more by providing ever less actual value.
And though Lemmy won't like this, it's not unique to capitalism, since it happens with any hierarchical system from which value is expected and can be derived. In fact, it's the heart of the reason that state communism so consistently fails - because state communism provides a particularly easy method by which self-serving scumbags can maximize the benefit to themselves by offering as little benefit as possible to those they're meant to serve and relying on market dominance to ensure that they continue to hold their positions in spite of their general failure to provide anything of value to anyone else.
Broadly, yes - it's happening to pretty much everything, and has been happening to pretty much everything to which it could happen for all of history, and will continue to. The only way I can see to avoid it is to somehow eliminate self-serving scumbags entirely, so that all that's left are people who have the necessary integrity to hold to a virtue of providing value to others and only rewarding themselves as they genuinely deserve, and I don't see that happening any time soon, if ever.
This should be a manifesto. Well written!
It'salways the self serving parasites without empathy that destroys everything.
Are they good for anything at all? Do they push innovation or productivity? Like would a company without these people be crushed by companies with such people (not counting on them using dirty tricks) like Marx iron law (IIRC)?
I'd love to read more about this, but all I can find is always always tainted either by some status quo idea or basing everything on capitalism or dream thinking like communism or anarchism which just doesn't work because of these kind if people.
Can we detect non-empatic people and not allow them to manage people? Would that be a good first step?
Are they good for anything at all?
No.
They're a part of the system, so it seems like they need to be a part of the system, but actually it's that the system has been warped to accommodate them.
Do they push innovation or productivity?
They specifically push it, but if and only if there's an angle by which they can parasitize off of it. They don't originate anything. Ever.
Like would a company without these people be crushed by companies with such people...?
Probably.
I figured out long ago that that's the case on a personal level. The specific way it works:
People competing for a position in a hierarchy have to make decisions that will impact their chances.
People with integrity, morals, ethics, empathy, principles, etc. will have some number of potential options that they simply will not choose. People with none of those things are not so constrained - they're able to do absolutely whatever it takes to get what they want, entirely regardless of any other condiderations. So all other things being more or less equal, amoral, unprincipled, dishonest, sociopathic pieces of shit actuyallt have a competitive advantage in hierarchies.
I hadn't before considered whether that's the case between businesses, but I would assume so.
I’d love to read more about this, but all I can find is always always tainted either by some status quo idea or basing everything on capitalism or dream thinking like communism or anarchism which just doesn’t work because of these kind if people.
I'm actually an anarchist in large part because of all of this, but my anarchism is very much an ideal. There's absolutely no way that current humanity could manage it on any sort of scale, so when I advocate for it, I'm really just trying to promote the mindset that will make it possible sometime in the future.
I actually think that anarchism will not only one day be possible, but, if humanity survives, it will be inevitable. It's vessentiallybthe adulthood of society - the point at which collectively - not just situationally and individually - we'll be able to live without mommy and daddy state making sure we behave.
Can we detect non-empatic people and not allow them to manage people? Would that be a good first step?
I've actually said before that if I could leave a message for the people who will end up trying to rebuild civilization out of the rubble we leave behind, it would be, "Whatever you do, don't let psychopaths gain power."
I think there's no single thing that anyone could do to improve literally everything that would be more effective than to somehow implement an international effort to identify and isolate sociopaths and psychopaths - that they do more harm to the planet and its people than anything else, and by a considerable margin.
But I don't see any way it could happen, if for no other reason than that the psychopaths and sociopaths in the relevant positions would prevent it.
Which is exactly why I thought of leaving a message for our heirs, in the hope that they'll do a better job of it from the start. Which I think is the only real chance humanity has.
I'm not criticising anything, you're the person I'd love have a coffee with and discuss.
I guess socialism, communism or anarchism are all something society would tend to if there weren't all those people living off of the abuse of others.
I'm an absurdist myself (so I do good as I can), I hope the world won't come to a stupid end and that we can figure out billions of $ is not what a good life needs, and incidentally cure aging so that we can be there for the ride a bit longer!
Cheers
Transperancy is part of the solution and there are some basic tools built into the system like FOIA porcess, laws and regulation making process is technically public, finances are also publicly available...
That was enough to maintain the character of "democracy" until recently but with too much internet the oligarchy is being exposed and there is no pathe to modernize and reform the system.
And Ruling class is getting brazen to test the security apparatus ability to maintain the regime despite aggressively looting.
I don't have the energy to type this out but this is the Manifesto of the parasite pretty much.
Nice note re how this is not Capitalism specific issue but our daddies sure as fuck perfected the extraction racket tho... More value means more chances to extract profit!
Fuck all y'all, I am getting paid today.
I'm not familiar with "manifesto of the parasite," but I can guess what it refers to. And yes - they are parasites, in the purest sense of the term, and correctly and justly recognized as such.
And yeah - I don't really fault people for condemning capitalism, since it is an especially destructive system, but I do fault them for too often taking the position that these sorts of things are exclusive to capitalism - as if, if we could only eliminate capitalism, all of the problems would vanish. The problems are more fundamental than that. They're a function of institutionalized hierarchy, and capitalism is just one notable system by which hierarchies are established and institutionalized.
The problems are more fundamental than that. They're a function of institutionalized hierarchy, and capitalism is just one notable system by which hierarchies are established and institutionalize
200%
not every "capitalist" society is a US style degeneracy
Although I'd argue that they'll all end up more or less that sooner or later. It's baked in.
But I'd also argue that that's the case with all systems by which some come to hold greater power and/or wealth than others, regardless of the details. The mere fact that some can hold greater power and/or wealth than others sooner or later leads to abuse of the system by the most determinedly greedy and power-hungry, and the least constrained by ethics, principles, empathy or integrity, and the system is ultimately degraded for their immediate benefit regardless of the harm done to others or to the system itself.
And 'round and 'round it goes...
No doubt but I would prefer to be in the denmark or Swiss stage of the cycle... What we got in US is just too rough and it is getting progressively more fuck faster and faster...
In last 10 years the hope got squeezed out of vast majority of population. And nobody is even shilling a trend reversal.
Oh, no doubt.
Analogously, systems like Switzerland and Denmark are like stately and well cared for cars. As they age and little bits here and there break down, they get ever closer to their inevitable end, but it's a slow and halting process.
The US, on the other hand, is like a gigantic SUV/limo that somebody slapped together in their back yard, and that the Musks of the world drive the shit out of without bothering to even lift a finger to do the tiniest bit of maintenance or repair.
Lol all tankies and others down voting you because you won't acknowledge their dream.
You're right IMO.