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.

burgersc12, (edited )

Theres a few problems

  1. Companies trying to maximize profits
  2. Corrupt political systems lets companies exploit their workers and customers alike
  3. Supply chains have been getting disrupted more and more. “Just in time” and getting “just enough” supplies no longer works well. A lot of stuff gets delayed or out of stock
  4. We expect unlimited resources on a finite planet. Whether its plastic junk, useless tech, or food we expect it to be available 24/7/365
xmunk,

A big one that you missed is

It’s socially acceptable and even encouraged for companies to fuck their customers. People assume that not being fucked over by a company means that company isn’t doing well.

HubertManne,
@HubertManne@kbin.social avatar

because people swallow. stop going to that taco bell or taco bell in general. likewise for other things.

CanadaPlus,

It’s a pretty complicated economics question why inflation is happening. They’re working on it by adjusting interest rates, I guess.

As for why the average American isn’t doing so well, it’s basically the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer. If this same inflation was happening with a 70’s distribution of wealth (and IIRC it actually did) it wouldn’t be fun but it wouldn’t be pushing so many people to the brink, either.

Spyder,

Maybe they are out of them because some ghoul took all of them to clean their car? One self entitled customer.

Rolando,

Taco Bell will just put out a “napkin tipping” jar and blame lack of tips for not providing napkins.

therealjcdenton,

People haven’t learned to vote with their wallets

Vcio,

As was once said(something like): if vote with your wallet, the people with bigger wallets get more votes.

SkyNTP,

Capitalism: a short story.

therealjcdenton,

Yep that’s true, but I think in the long haul appealing to more people is better than just one

AnonStoleMyPants,

Sounds like a weird saying.

It assumes that the people with bigger wallets also use a larger portion (absolute money, not percentages) on the “thing” to begin with. If the billionaire and the middle class man uses 10€ on the same thing a month, and both stop doing it, then they both got the same amount of “votes”. Much more fitting would be: “if you vote with your wallet, people who spend more money get more votes”.

Of course this only applies if you’re talking about boycots etc, and not about buying stuff.

And yes, people with bigger wallets probably have more sway and power when it comes to get getting their way if they want to, but when people talk about voting with your wallet, they’re not talking about this.

Vcio,

“if you vote with your wallet, people who spend more money get more votes”.

as i said “something like”, but overall it’s the same idea, semantics.

Of course this only applies if you’re talking about boycots etc, and not about buying stuff.

It applies in both cases, for example the design of a product (game Diablo 4) or the process of gentrification.

Venomnik0,

We’re in a generation of complacency. Nobody cares and our to busy consuming to care.

slaughtermouse,

A sizeable chunk is too busy surviving.

Evil_incarnate,

The system is working as intended.

PlasterAnalyst,

I mean, you would save a lot more money if you did 2 seconds of research by comparing prices before you buy things and also avoiding unnecessary expenditures like convenience foods like Taco Bell, junk food, and carbonated beverages.

It's amazing to me how many people let themselves get nickel and dimed to death because, "it's only $20."

affiliate,

In 2023, a full-time worker needs to earn an hourly wage of $28.58 on average to afford a modest, two-bedroom rental home in the U.S. This Housing Wage for a two-bedroom home is nearly four times higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25.

source: nlihc.org/oor/about

this isn’t even taking into account groceries, transportation, medical expenses, etc. the problem is not buying too many carbonated drinks.

PlasterAnalyst,

It says the average rent for a 2 bedroom rental is $1,486. If you're working $15/hr then you absolutely should be avoiding unnecessary expenses if you want to afford to live. Many people lack impulse control and financial literacy. If they had savings, then they could afford to ride out emergencies and move for a better job, things you can't do when you have $15 to your name. It honestly hurts to watch some people actively hurting themselves by their own bad decisions.

piyuv,

No, this line of thinking is wrong, I wish people would stop saying this. Voting with your wallet never works when 1% has >50% of wealth. It’s easier for 5% of people (wealthy, top execs) to agree on milking the rest than 95% of people to agree on boycotting a certain brand. That’s why we have regulations, we wouldn’t need them if “voting with wallets” actually worked.

Free market capitalism got us to this point, it cannot take us out of this.

rbhfd,

1% might have 50% of the wealth, they do not account for 50% of the spending. Especially not at Taco Bell.

Pure capitalism is broken af, but companies like this will feel it if 10% of costumers stops going there. The increase in price can recover some of it, but only to a certain extent. It’s a simple supply and demand issue.

That being said, I’m not from the US, so take my opinion on local issues with a grain of salth. And I definitely don’t mean to imply that wealth inequality is not an issue. On the contrary.

piyuv,

You mean well and I wish you were right, but capitalism proves you wrong time and time again. Remember when everyone cancelled their Netflix subscriptions and the company went bankrupt because they disallowed account sharing? Yeah, that was the sentiment on all social media.

rbhfd,

No, it proves me right. People are still willing to pay for the service despite the price hike. So it must mean that people think this non-essential service, for which there are alternatives, is worth the money.

Unfortunately, this is users allowing for this kind of behaviour.

The original comment was that voting with your wallet doesn’t work. I’m saying that it’s a problem with enough people voting with their wallet. If you are the only person that cares about something and stop buying from a particular company, they will not even notice it.

On the other hand, look what happened when bud light had this thing with a trans influencer and conservatives got ridiculously upset with this, as they do. ABInbev is still feeling the effects of that.

kromem,

Nobody did that in net change numbers.

If your theory was right, Netflix is succeeding because Saudi billionaires from the 1% bought up thousands of Netflix subscriptions to make up for the average Joe from the 99% that unsubscribed.

What really happened was that when they added household restrictions they saw a net increase in subscriptions, not from the 1%, but from the 99%.

While the concentration of wealth has significant effects on opportunity and access to capital, it means pretty much jack shit to access to revenue, which is dictated by mass spending and very susceptible to voting with your dollar.

We literally just saw a company hit hard by people voting with their dollar, with one of the largest alcoholic beverage companies taking a significant loss because they pissed off two sides of the market with their behavior, with effects still going on today.

hperrin,

Hard to do that when everything is a fucking oligopoly. If you don’t like Taco Bell, have fun also avoiding KFC, Pizza Hut, and The Habit, all owned by Yum! Brands.

kromem,

Go to your locally owned Mexican restaurant instead.

Stop letting advertising direct your purchasing intent towards mega-corp brands.

NeroC_Bass,

Taco bell has switched their demographic from dining in, to take out and drive thru. Started with the pandemic, that’s why most stuff that used to be readily available isn’t put out anymore. All the taco bells in my area did this, same with several other fast food chains.

Why I don’t eat out as much is because of the shrinkflation. Back in the mid 90’s you used to be able to get a whopper for a dollar. Now they’re pushing $6 and they just aren’t the same anymore. More if you get a meal.

doom_and_gloom, (edited )

deleted_by_author

    •
    JackiesFridge,
    @JackiesFridge@lemmy.world avatar

    It’ll be a capitastrophe.

    MonsiuerPatEBrown,

    I’ve given up being nice to CSR that work for shit companies and go to bat for them.

    They need to quit or go on strike.

    Buttfucking me the customer as a response to working at a shit establishment and toxic work environment does not fly any longer.

    Ethos_logos,

    I’ve found being nice to people, especially the folks who tend to get treated horribly, usually leads to a way better experience. They’ll go out of their way to help you if you’re nice.

    Especially in a scenario where they’re being recorded on the phone - they’d lose their jobs if they say or admit anything negative about their bosses. Some even get in trouble if they go off script.

    Just let them know your issue, if you are kind and persistent, odds are ittl worn out in your favor.

    Neve8028,

    I assume because some fucking ghoul noticed people liked taking them for their cars so now we just don’t get napkins!

    They were probably just out and too busy to restock or something. It happens. Never been to a fast food place where they don’t provide napkins and I steal napkins from the taco bell I live near regularly. What a weird overreaction.

    slackassassin,

    Ya, this whole thread is unhinged. Very strange.

    Neve8028,

    Welcome to lemmy. I hate big corporations but some of the people on this site will blame amazon when they stub their toe.

    LadyAutumn,
    @LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    A lot of people are responding to the title, not to the body of the post.

    Why was there no napkin dispenser? Dunno could be a lot of things.

    Why does everything get progressively shittier under capitalism? It’s probably not related to the napkin dispenser specifically, but everything under capitalism gets progressively shittier.

    slackassassin,

    Maybe. But there’s a lot of “They’re coming for your napkins to maximize profit!”

    hperrin,

    Do you really have to ask? Capitalism, when it goes unchecked, turns everything shitty. Capitalism has been relatively unchecked in the US for the last 50 years, so everything is shitty. That’s starting to change as unions become more powerful again, but they’re still a fraction of what they were in the early 20th century. Late stage capitalism, baby!

    1847953620,

    mArXiSm

    go actually read Marx, dude was smart af.

    01189998819991197253,
    @01189998819991197253@infosec.pub avatar

    Anything in particular? He has boocoos of books.

    1847953620,

    beaucoups

    IHadTwoCows,

    Gesundheit

    01189998819991197253,
    @01189998819991197253@infosec.pub avatar

    There are multiple acceptable spellings of this word.

    beau·coup (bō′ko͞o′, bo͞o′-, bō-ko͞o′) also boo·coo or boo·koo (bo͞o′-)Informal

    I chose boocoos, because it looks funny.

    fossilesque,
    @fossilesque@mander.xyz avatar

    The Manifesto is literally 20 pages.

    feedum_sneedson,

    Capital 1, if you can hack it.

    01189998819991197253,
    @01189998819991197253@infosec.pub avatar

    It’s very long. Seems interesting, though. As someone that has lived in communism, I can say with first hand that it doesn’t work en mass. But, then again, capitalism doesn’t work either…

    feedum_sneedson,

    It’s more of a treatise on economics.

    01189998819991197253,
    @01189998819991197253@infosec.pub avatar

    Oh ok cool. I added to the reading list yesterday, and plan to get to it after the one I’m reading now.

    DudeDudenson,

    Unions have nothing to do with companies enshittifying their products and services

    Godric, (edited )

    Not only are unions enjoying a resurgence holding employers to account, the FTC under Lina Khan is doing antitrust for the first time in most of our lifetimes. It’s bad now, but it will get better if we fight for it like we did back then.

    Cannacheques,

    Free the beers and we might see some novel inventions like the Japanese toilet bidet )

    Jenntron,
    @Jenntron@lemmy.world avatar

    Everything is cheaper and made of thinner materials. But I can’t tell if it tastes worse because it’s of lesser quality or because of the covid I had.

    Jessvj93,

    Ngl think it’s this too, read somewhere that dyes used in commercial products were strained so some products started literally looking thinned out. Personally I saw it in our lab gloves, the blue dye was looking…not uniform. Everywhere there is probably some strain on production and people being stressed tf out.

    JokeDeity,

    Shareholders. Part of me thinks they see the writing on the walls of climate change and want to just get the most they can out of the rest of the short time we have left.

    cloud,

    because it is not designed to be good but just to make money

    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.

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