Why is everything in consumer / American life so fucking shitty now - and companies literally just say 'oh bc profit margins' and we're now expected to swallow that and sympathize?

like I went to taco bell and they didn’t even have napkins out. they had the other stuff just no napkins, I assume because some fucking ghoul noticed people liked taking them for their cars so now we just don’t get napkins! so they can save $100 per quarter rather than provide the barest minimum quality of life features.

eletes,
@eletes@sh.itjust.works avatar

We’re in a modern gilded age. There are no consequences for modern day robber barons.

LostWon, (edited )

To add to this – Cory Doctorow, the very guy who coined the term “enshittification,” has written about this. (Been meaning to read some of his books to see his explanations on how to fight it but I’m still getting through another book right now so I’ve only seen vids and read a sample.)

Zibitee,

If you’ve never operated or owned a restaurant before, it’s because the top 3 expenses in a restaurant are: food, labor, and paper. Controlling paper usage helps control costs significantly. That’s why.

TimewornTraveler,

bruh they just didn’t have napkins, the employees probably just didn’t give a shit

I mean things are getting shittier but you’re complaining about napkins?

Seasoned_Greetings,

I think the point is more that we live in a time where “because we cut napkins to add pennies to our bottom line” is an answer we have to seriously consider. Even if it isn’t the case, it’s plausible enough to be awful.

orcrist,

Capitalism is the answer. Greed, unchecked profits.

Bluefrog1313,

$$$$$

SnotFlickerman,

You load 16 tons, what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt

St. Peter, don’t you call me 'cause I can’t go

I owe my soul to the company store

bionicjoey,

Much as I love that song, it doesn’t really apply to the OP question, which is more about companies exploiting their customers rather than their workers.

SnotFlickerman,

Workers are consumers.

tygerprints,

That's how our economy works, how it's always worked. Get on the hamster wheel and don't stop for 45 years but take breaks to spend what little money have to keep you in enough debt to stay on the hamster wheel for 45 years.

grabyourmotherskeys,

That is what people miss. This is “the system”. It starts and ends with government and “we” chose this (I’m Canadian, we have similar issues but not as extreme, yet).

By continually voting in sociopathic narcissistic social climbers as both public and private sector policy makers (think of shareholders and corporate governance boards) we ensure the system is rigged for the top dogs.

The truth is the system could work in the average person’s favour very easily but it would mean limiting some personal freedoms; mostly of very, very rich people. It also would require the average person to get off the “everyone is exploiting me, so I need to do that to them first” treadmill.

Many people have never been on that treadmill (never had the chance or donate excess income or time to local food banks, etc).

The very, very rich don’t care. They simply maximize the profit in any situation. Put them in prison and they’ll give out legal advice for cigarettes and turn that into a burner phone they use to call their Cayman Islands broker.

It’s the upper/upper-middle people who will feel the pain as income is redistributed to poverty stricken people. And if we just impose ubi without fixing the “CEO problem” it will simply lead to inflation. Sucess of ubi programs is entirely due to it happening in a local market. Expand globally without fixing capitalism and you get inflation.

A socialist approach that still allows significant room for upwrd mobility (e.g. CEO can make up to 10x minimum wage, as a non-expert guess) with some type of employee representation on the board of large businesses (state imposed labour union) would probably do it.

Then make ubi contingent on minor public service with free daycare that you can use when performing said services (exception if you have more than 2 kids under 12, or are disabled in some way) say two days a week (networking, activity, build resume) would be a brainstorming idea to workshop.

kent_eh,

And it seems that “our corporate masters” don’t understand that underpaid or laid off people don’t have the purchasing power to buy more stuff.

In their relentless pursuit of profits, they are killing off the ability of people to be customers.

nitefox,

Just give em a subscription then!

Maeve,

They don’t even give them 50% of meals anymore, for a full shift.

PeleSpirit,

I think what a lot of people are saying is that they do both, exploit their customers and their workers.

jhulten,

And at least in food, it’s the same eight companies that own everything…

Zorg,

In a lot of towns your only grocery option is Walmart, unless you wanna drive 1+ hours. In small towns/villages you might only have a dollar general within that distance. Large corporation slaughter small businesses when they move in.

kent_eh,

See also The Walmart effect

Wootz,

I think what this comment is trying to say is that we’re headed towards an age that resembles what that song talks about: An age of unfettered capitalism, with a small number of corporation owning so much of the market that they can do what they want with no repercussions.

bionicjoey,

Okay but that song is from like a century ago and mostly things haven’t changed much in that time. Certainly we don’t have company stores/scrip anymore, but the grim outlook that song has on the world is still fairly accurate.

jandar_fett,

Bro. We are already there. The tobacco industry sued Australia for fighting to keep graphic pictures and descriptions of lung disease/cancer on cigarette packs and WON. Against the entire fucking government of Australia.

TimewornTraveler,

the song is about debt bondage from last century lol look up Company Towns

feedum_sneedson,

16 napkins

TimewornTraveler,

the song was about company towns where the laborers were paid in store credit instead of wages. you’d work, but never pay off debts, since it all went back to the companies who set the prices for everything you buy, and so they were able to keep you on a tight leash.

That’s how it feels like things are going now. a few companies own everything, pay our wages, and set our prices. we cannot get ahead.

Crackhappy,
@Crackhappy@lemmy.world avatar

I love Joe Vs. The Volcano (where this song is featured) because it really encapsulates the idea of the song.

crashfrog,

The American consumer is the worst-behaved, most deranged, most thievery-prone they’ve ever been in history. “The customer is always right” thinking is endemic. Roving bands of Karens are straight-up assaulting workers. People want everything for free and figure “gratis” means “loot an entire two-armed carry.” Not to even get started on the fucking shoplifting!

When people abuse a privilege, you take the privilege away, from everyone. It’s pretty simple. If you want a retail experience where you feel privileged and taken care of then you need to be going to places that have some kind of mechanism to keep the hoi polloi away. A membership fee, an unusual location, some kind of barrier to entry.

Etterra,

Because the corporations write the rules. Literally; laws are written by corps and presented to lawmakers along with “gifts” and “campaign donations” - and implicit quid pro quo. They then present them to be voted upon, sometimes without even bothering to read them.

Jenntron,
@Jenntron@lemmy.world avatar

Exactly that. We are run by corporations more so than our elected officials. A lot of people fail to fully understand this fact. Corporations and capitalism is the answer to why everything sucks.

Facebones,

And no matter how well documented it is, people just go “nuh uh” and call you a socialist if you bring it up.

KingThrillgore,
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

Its hard to believe a fucking nobody bank like SVB collapsing could do this.

Empricorn, (edited )

I’m with you, OP: for some reason, it’s the little things I notice.

I’m in grocery stores a lot. It used to be, there was a nice little seating area there to sit, drink my coffee and work. But now, because homeless people dared to duck inside a public-facing area to briefly escape the elements, they removed many of the tables and chairs and they’re now a big, empty space. Heaven forbid they add more seating, actually staff enough people to enforce a time-limit, etc; no, instead we all are worse off for it. But corporate profits have never been higher, so worth it, right!?

EncryptKeeper,

Take a trip to PA, all the grocery and convenience stores have added seating areas so that they can legally sell beer and wine lmao.

KingThrillgore,
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

They piloted this in Nashville at Kroger and something changed for them to turn around and remove them.

GiddyGap,

The US has not set up a system that compensates properly. Most European countries have a security net in place when capitalism squeezes regular people. The US does not. You’re on your own.

OrteilGenou,

Are you sure they didn’t just conscript the napkins for TP? It is Taco Bell after all…

S_204,

3 sea shells about to be placed in the taco bell washrooms as cost saving measures.

Donebrach,
@Donebrach@lemmy.world avatar

Did you ask if they had some napkins? Yes we are living in a post capitalist nightmare but honestly, seems more likely the wage slave in charge of putting out the napkins either hadn’t had a chance to do so or forgot.

Malfeasant,

If there’s an empty napkin dispenser, that would be my assumption. But it’s been happening more often and at more places that no, they don’t even have dispensers, you need to ask for napkins.

TooManyGames,

We’ve let our companies grow too large, giving them the ability to put the screws on us. Also competition isn’t really happening in many fields, as ask the companies are owned by pretty much the same people.

C126,

Why do you think there isn’t more competition? I was wondering if it was too much red tape/legal risk to start up a business. Everyone is saying how greedy these companies are, so they must be charging way more than a fair price, which means an average Joe should be able to step in and provide the same stuff for a fair price.

force,

For a lot of cases the answer is lobbying, e.g. in medical/healthcare there’s practical 0 competition for a lot of products because of anti-competitive laws like really shitty intellectual property laws that let prices be controlled by few (collaborating) companies. Plus there’s a lot of things that are technically illegal, but in practice laws only apply to the poors so they’re not really illegal for corporations: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-competitive_practices#…

LoreleiSankTheShip,
@LoreleiSankTheShip@lemmy.ml avatar

The Average Joe rarely has enough capital to start a promising enterprise and when they do manage to, they get bought up by the very same corporations they were trying to compete against.

We’ve reached a point where corpos can just buy out the competition and do whatever they please to it.

And it’s not even a greed issue, really. The system is kill or be killed, a corporation that doesn’t do this sort of shady thing won’t make as much money and will be bought out by others that do.

We have to change the rules of the game.

affiliate,

quite a few of them are “natural monopolies”. for those unaware (source):

A natural monopoly is a type of monopoly in an industry or sector with high barriers to entry and start-up costs that prevent any rivals from competing. As such, a natural monopoly has only one efficient player. This company may be the only provider of a product or service in an industry or geographic location.

ie, cable companies, electricity suppliers, amazon. it’s really complicated and really expensive to build the infrastructure needed to meaningfully compete in those industries.

another relevant concept is the “network effect”, defined as (source):

a business principle that illustrates the idea that when more people use a product or service, its value increases.

this kind of thing is more applicable to things like social media companies (they’re more appealing the more users they have). this makes it hard to compete with social media companies because convincing people to use your new app is really hard if the usefulness of it depends on everyone’s friends already being on it. (this is also part of the reason twitter is taking so painfully long to die)

both concepts illustrate the different barriers to entry that exist when trying to compete with these giant companies. these barriers are also what allow these huge companies to get so complacent.

(i’m not happy about quoting investopedia or wharton, but they do give simple definitions of both concepts so i did it just this once.)

TooManyGames,

Competition goes way down when all the different companies are owned by a very small set of huge companies. And for these companies it’s easy to setup cartels and just simply not compete and jack up the prices. Competition happens when the companies must make a profit or die, not when conglomerates can trust that they’re the only game in town.

buzz,
@buzz@lemmy.world avatar

So what are you doing about it?

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • uselessserver093
  • Food
  • [email protected]
  • aaaaaaacccccccce
  • test
  • CafeMeta
  • testmag
  • MUD
  • RhythmGameZone
  • RSS
  • dabs
  • oklahoma
  • Socialism
  • KbinCafe
  • TheResearchGuardian
  • Ask_kbincafe
  • SuperSentai
  • feritale
  • KamenRider
  • All magazines
    •