Originally created 8th June 2021
Have you noticed a regal sense of entitlement that products these days seem to have, wafting down on you from the shelves?
A sense of, “Be grateful <consumer_first_name> , for this expensive crap - for we made it, and our salaries don’t come cheap”.
I’ve been pondering this for a while. Initially I thought it was a simple case of companies being quicker to realise when they’ve cornered a market, and wasting no time at all in cutting costs and jettisoning quality in the pursuit of whatever margins they can make until such a time as their customers have drifted off, aimlessly confused why it was so damn difficult for that company just to keep doing that same thing they were already doing, I mean, they had me won over! Why not just keep making it as you were already doing so wonderfully!
Maybe it’s COVID wrecking supply chains, or the majority of other customers are just too oblivious to notice?
Why am I being sold ostensibly oat gloop water for nearly the same price as almond milk? And why am I being sold rice water as “almond drink”?
Yes, yes, I know how bad it would be if they had actually sold "full" almond milk, I’ve read the articles too. But puzzle me this: why could you buy almond milk only 1 litre at a time, whereas you can buy fruit juice by the 20cl (supposing you fancied a few generous sips of it)?
When the organic food shop sells me carrots which are so wobbly they could be folded in half without breaking, who should feel good about this, me or the shop? Presumably me, as they’ve cost me more than regular non-organic ones, and I can no longer afford them.
The fallout from all of this is that oat powder for hot drinks is about as available as gold dust, and a good carrot soup the reserve of the exceptionally wealthy.
Which brings me to the thesis of my discussion. The reason all of these things are happening is that startups in particular are awash with money from venture capitalists who simply have no idea what to do with it all. These aren’t the Berkshire Hathaways or Amazons of the world. They want one thing only: the Golden Ticket to Excessive Riches, and then to sell it with no delay to (progressively) dumber money, until eventually its the average Joe who pays for the privilege of playing a part in the success of our luminary, visionary, founder, what-have-you.
So you say to me “that's the same story as always bro, move along nothing to see here”. But wait! When you set out on your “Mission” can you tell me with what percentage you actually believed it, and what percentage it was for the Golden Ticket, in all honesty? Presumably at least some of it was for the Mission which involved, at some point I hope, regular ol’ Joe? But then I look at the same company in only the shortest of timespans later, and can’t help but notice the Golden Ticket has changed hands.
And I know, I know, life isn’t always so plain.
But the truth is, really, that the Golden Ticket is a different game than helping out regular Joe and, you know, caring.
And what they say is right - there has always been a mix of these factors. Caring about the regular Joe can be an effective way of winning the Golden Ticket at the same time. But what has changed is that this illusion is no longer necessary for smart money, and the dumb money never cared much anyway.
The age of pg’s caring about the customer as a strategy by default is over. Please contact sales to learn more about your pricing.
In response to the financial crash, no one was allowed to fail, and whoever was in charge back then opted for trickle-down keynesianism as more palatable than the old fashioned version.
No phased in, 15-year transition from larger structures to smaller ones. And just so you know, marches and staking ground won’t do much either.
Your spending dollar doesn’t matter any more. Your opinion can be useful, if astroturfing is effective enough at guiding it in the right direction.
The Well Meaning is attacked by the Vested Interest, even assuming you still care to believe Well Meaning is not just a byword for Wealth Accumulation with the outcome still to be determined.
Lemma: Salary is inversely correlated to how useful a given job is to society (the marginal loss for society in the event of sudden heart attack).
Sketch of a proof: If it were really important, it would already be done.
Less unthinking schoolbook capitalism, please! Don’t be a brain fart floating from one existence to the next.
I don’t have an answer for all our woes, except a vague “find happiness in other things”.
In fact, that’s a lie, the solution couldn’t more easily smack you in the face if it was a giant flailing fish. The solution is taxing the rich and paying the poor - at very little downside to humanity, the same as it has always been, ever.
Coming up in Part 2: So you’re having doubts about the efficacy of “taxing the rich, paying the poor"
Discussions welcome!
- Silicon Valley S03E02 directed by Mike Judge, written by Ron Weiner: "Pied Piper's product is its stock"
- Techno Feudalism - Yanis Varoufakis (earlier in blog form, now published as a book)
- despite the "Techno" name, the book addresses the same general issue across the global economy as discussed in this post
- (as an aside, the book is by no means perfect, as it severely limits its window of history, and uses questionable metaphors. I also think it could better sell its Marxist philosophy if it simply said "it takes a society to make an X", and left it at that.)
- (Almost certainly) Other Economics work on Inequality (- please let me know!)
- A subsequent related essay and term, Enshittification, emerged describing specifically digital scenarios of the Crapification of Products. It elaborates on the Golden Ticket more in terms of the lifecycle of what I think could be described as "Product-Company as a Traded Product", but describes more the effects of market failure and monopoly than the causes of distribution of wealth and its influence on company funding sources as in this essay. I believe the general issue is not solely attributable to market failure, as Crapification of Products applies not just to a long-lived tech company but also to beverage brands that aren't monopolies
- Caveat, there may be market failure in retail property and beverage conglomerates which exacerbate the problem. Market failure in Retail Property, Consumer Goods and Tech both indicate systemic issues that warrant attention. I argue that better "competition of money" from redistributive taxation is an important part of the solution, albeit maybe not the whole solution.
- For a much more complete and comprehensive analysis, see Yanis Varoukis' output on the areas of inequality and monopoly