back to article Cory Doctorow has a plan to wipe away the enshittification of tech

An apocryphal tale regarding the late, great footballer George Best being interviewed by a reporter just after getting suspended from Manchester United offers an apt description of today’s tech industry right now. Best was the finest footballer (or soccer in Freedom Language) of his generation during the Swinging Sixties and …

  1. elsergiovolador Silver badge

    Deliberation

    shareholder> Hey that server costs, where they come from?

    cto> ad serving, search

    shareholder> what brings money?

    cto> ad serving

    shareholder> can you make search to search less?

    cto> yes but people are not going to like it

    shareholder> where do they go?

    cto> yes, boss. On it.

    1. katrinab Silver badge

      Re: Deliberation

      The answer is for someone to come along and do to Google what Google did to Altavista.

      Google is now at least as bad as Altavista was for search results back in its dying days.

      1. Calum Morrison

        Re: Deliberation

        Easier said than done; I'd love to see it, but Altavista wasn't embedded in almost literally everything back then so it was easier for us all to switch to this hot new thing that just worked. Google have been very clever about how far and wide they have grown. There's barely an area of business, never mind just technology, that doesn't have it plumbed in like a canc, err, viru, err... Hell, it's been a verb for a generation. And to think, we used to worry about Microsoft's dominance.

        1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

          Re: Deliberation

          Google are also vastly richer than AltaVista ever were. So they can buy competition or tangle them up in expensive patent lawsuits in order to hamper competition.

          Not that money will save you forever. But it can be used to obscure/ignore problems for quite a long time before it often comes to a sudden stop.

        2. 43300 Silver badge

          Re: Deliberation

          "And to think, we used to worry about Microsoft's dominance."

          That hasn't changed - they still have close to a monopoly on the general-office OS market and the general-purpose Office software market (which they have largely converted into a subscription service with an ever-increasing number of SaaS services). They are also the second-largest IaaS provider.

          1. Calum Morrison

            Re: Deliberation

            Not saying they're not a concern but they don't have anything like the reach that Google has. My 2009 Alfa Romeo 159 had a rather sorry MS-branded USB hi-fi that allowed me to scroll through MP3 tracks on a memory stick. A 2023 Volvo (or Polestar, or Geely, or London Taxi...) has its entire operating system run by Google, collecting metrics on everything from location to weather to traffic to music played, to passengers carried etc, etc, etc. Now that's a lot of data.

            1. MachDiamond Silver badge

              Re: Deliberation

              "run by Google, collecting metrics on everything from location to weather to traffic to music played, to passengers carried etc, etc, etc. Now that's a lot of data."

              Yes, but the cars where you find it installed are often the more expensive models. While it's a lot of data to parse, it's data on people of means, celeb, politicians and VIP's of all sorts. Couple the data that companies hold about shopping, annual income, legal wrangling and everything else, there's not much left about those people that isn't known and for sale. Any vehicle I might be looking to purchase would get an instant nix for having Google or another giant data hoovering company software package installed. Even if I'm guilty as sin, I don't want my fate sealed with one subpoena for the data sent out by my car. A car that likely cost me tens of thousands to buy and thousands in interest costs.

              1. 43300 Silver badge

                Re: Deliberation

                As is always the case with changes to car technology, it starts in the more expensive models but then cascades its way down to all of them over a few years.

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Deliberation

        I can't remember Altavista being that bad at all.

        1. Calum Morrison

          Re: Deliberation

          None of them were, but Google was just better. Remember their super clean interface, just as the rest started cluttering things up.

          1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

            Re: Deliberation

            Yahoo!'s front page ended up looking like a Geocities page. Except without use of the blink tag.

            Please El Reg, can we have the blink tag in the forums? Pretty please! We promise not to abuse it. And you can trust us, your loyal commentards.

          2. biddibiddibiddibiddi

            Re: Deliberation

            Well, Ask Jeeves always kind of sucked.

          3. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: Deliberation

            "Remember their super clean interface, just as the rest started cluttering things up."

            And as the dog returneth to his vomit, so does the search page to it's clutter. I stopped using Google when the entire first page of results was pure spam. How deep does one need to dig now to get to the first useful result, if any? Even using regular expressions to try and clean up the mess stopped working.

        2. James Anderson

          Re: Deliberation

          Whatever search term you entered the first thing that came up was a site which offered kalashnikov rifles at knock down prices, followed by a dating site specialising in eastern European or Viet namese ladies.

          I remember trying to get hold of the docs for the Unix screen handling software ncurses ..... That really did come up with some interesting results.

          So yes it was pretty crap. It was wiped out by the hotbot search engine which was pretty good but in turn got wiped out by Google.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Or more like Yahoo killed Altavista, Google killed Yahoo?

        > do to Google what Google did to Altavista

        Kind of nitpicking (I take your general point), but Yahoo would probably be a better comparison here.

        From what I remember- and a bit of checking to fill in the gaps confirms this- Yahoo had already eclipsed Altavista as the dominant search engine by the late 90s, i.e. around the time Google was founded (late 1998).

        I don't recall Google being that big a deal at first, but after the dotcom crash Google seemed to come from nowhere and race past Yahoo, leaving them in its dust. And they never really seemed to recover or move on from that.

        I mean, Yahoo- in its original form- was around for a long time after that (before Verizon finally bought the bulk of it in 2017), but they always *felt* like a has-been dinosaur, a relic of the dotcom era. Their name that would have sufficed as a lazy signifier of dotcom era nostalgia if they hadn't still been around. Post-2000 Yahoo was a company that felt like it survived in spite of itself, purely because of its size and inertia, like a white dwarf that was technically dead but able to glow from its own stored heat for an eternity.

        Anyway, Yahoo *did* have pretensions to being an early form of the one-stop destination that the likes of Google and Facebook have become in the modern age, with their move towards being a web portal.

        Granted, the minor "lock in" of a web portal sounds harmless compared to the more insidious and all-reaching integration and underpinnings that help maintain the monopolies of the likes of Google, Facebook et al today. But you could already see it moving in that direction, Yahoo just didn't move there fast enough.

        (Also, what finally got my lazy ass to switch from Yahoo to Google in the early 2000s was that I got sick of those stupid popup ads (anyone remember X10), so never underestimate the "annoyance" factor).

        1. katrinab Silver badge
          Meh

          Re: Or more like Yahoo killed Altavista, Google killed Yahoo?

          On the other hand, Altavista is completely dead now. Yahoo is still around, and I still use it.

          If I am looking for stock market or similar information, I go to Yahoo for it. It is very good. Google is, and always has been useless at that.

          The difference is that Google searches the whole internet, which is mostly Ponzi schemes and other scams; whereas Yahoo searches a very small range of trusted sources.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Or more like Yahoo killed Altavista, Google killed Yahoo?

            > Yahoo is still around

            Yes and no. The brand and website are still around, but the original company isn't.

            Verizon bought the main Yahoo operation in 2017, and the original business ceased to exist a couple of years later when its remaining assets were sold off separately.

            Ironically, from everything I've read, those "other" assets owned by Yahoo- i.e. their holdings in Yahoo Japan (*) and Alibaba- turned out to be worth far more than the main Yahoo business itself.

            (*) Yahoo Japan was a joint venture that had always been its own thing distinct from the main worldwide Yahoo, and latterly far more successful.

        2. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Or more like Yahoo killed Altavista, Google killed Yahoo?

          "(anyone remember X10)"

          The home control stuff? I've got a bunch. It's easy to put in, doesn't connect to the internet and it's fun to write scripts to automate some things if you are brave enough to construct your own power line interface. It's nice to be able to put switches for things wherever they are convenient.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Or more like Yahoo killed Altavista, Google killed Yahoo?

            Yes, but in this case it was more a reference to their notorious popup ads that were really common on Yahoo at the time and implied you could spy on various scantily-clad women.

      4. biddibiddibiddibiddi

        Re: Deliberation

        I don't remember AltaVista ever getting bad. It just didn't get better, while Google started out pretty good and got massively better. AltaVista died not because it got sick, but because it didn't grow any taller and Google's canopy blocked out the sunlight.

      5. LybsterRoy Silver badge

        Re: Deliberation

        You really want to screw Google up its easy - just make it a government department. Job done!

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Deliberation

          "You really want to screw Google up its easy - just make it a government department. Job done!"

          In a Utopian world, I could see a Department of Search that is taxpayer supported, doesn't accept advertising, money for boosted ranking and where gaming the system becomes an offense that unleashes the full weight of government upon the person attempting the fraud, as a good thing. I don't think a private company could pull off a subscription based service that didn't start devolving into a scheme that puts its focus on maximizing value for the shareholders.

          1. biddibiddibiddibiddi

            Re: Deliberation

            It sounds like in your utopian world everything is government-owned and government-run.

            1. MachDiamond Silver badge

              Re: Deliberation

              "It sounds like in your utopian world everything is government-owned and government-run."

              I got tired of typing. I could go on for paragraphs on all of the ways a government run search engine would suck. The utopian world in a pure form wouldn't have any need for a government as everybody would be honest and all would work for the common good. I didn't even fall for that when I was in college, but it still seems to be a popular theme on university campuses.

      6. Not-P

        Re: Deliberation

        As tempting as that might be, that's less an answer and more of the cycle continuing, no?

      7. captain veg Silver badge

        Re: Deliberation

        Altavista at least gave you what it's indexes contained. If what you were searching for had been indexed then it would be in the search results. Somewhere.

        Google was better in that it tried to guess what you were really after put that nearer the top of the results. The totality was much the same; the order was better.

        Having killed the competition, Google now almost completely ignores what you searched for and delivers whatever is best for its bottom line. This is capitalism. It doesn't always produce optimal results.

        -A.

      8. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Deliberation

        "The answer is for someone to come along and do to Google what Google did to Altavista."

        Since that time, Google has been able to write laws that keep that from happening to them. Anybody that tries will be guilty of a few Federal (US) felonies and subject to prison time that they might be able to plead down to a ban on using a computer for 5 years, can't have a mobe and can't publish anything about the case. This is one of the big problems that Cory points out.

  2. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    One cannot offer novel solutions if one doesn’t recognise systemic problems

    In the end it should be possible to reverse the current trend and reintroduce a more competitive technology industry environment that can spur innovation, spread the wealth, and grow more efficient for users, employers, and investors.

    What/Who says it was ever impossible?

    Whenever profit is always money for nothing making everything surprisingly quickly too expensive to employ and enjoy, will its systems implode and support groups be forced to seek protection from liquidation ‽ .

    1. HuBo Silver badge
      Alien

      Re: One cannot offer novel solutions if one doesn’t recognise systemic problems

      Pffft, earthlings can be so naive at times ... which reminds me, have you seen my cattle prod? I've got to go corral me a dozen or so of them for my new Mars Pyramid project, right next to Cydonia ... it will be HUUUUUGE!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @HuBo - Re: One cannot offer novel solutions if one doesn’t recognise systemic problems

        Only at times ?

        I believe these days suckers have become the most valuable economic resource. Oh, and it is renewable too.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Stallman was right

    Again.

    > With a few small portals dominating the technology landscape and either buying out or crushing the competition, it's looking like entrenched interests are ceasing to innovate themselves, and settling into just generating value for shareholders – customers and suppliers be damned.

    This is exactly what he warned about.

    As much as he may have, umm, a questionable persona; when it comes to tech the Big Bad Beard is on the money time and time again.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @AC - Re: Stallman was right

      This is the problem. We were encouraged to look at the person and not listen to his ideas.

      Just look at every article about FOSS and GPL and see hordes of developers and other people whining about the brutal, unbearable restrictions of copyleft while praising BSD. I wonder what could be their motive.

  4. Andy 73 Silver badge

    Bog Zech?????

    Now that's either a famous Russian chip designer, or a great typo.

    Not sure that unionisation will deliver better services and value for end users (remember the car industry of the 70's had effectively gone through a similar growth and stagnation process), but the diagnosis is accurate

    The challenge here is scale, which is hard to fight. Whilst the big game studios hire and fire tens of thousands of overworked staff, the indie scene (which isn't paying CEO salaries of tens of millions of dollars) struggles to afford development costs.

    Back to the car industry - the collapse in the 70s didn't deliver new car companies in the west, so much as open the door to competition from countries with lower wages and more committed workers.

    1. elsergiovolador Silver badge

      Re: Bog Zech?????

      Do you mean Bohdan "BogZech" Zechenko? That's Ukrainian.

    2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: Bog Zech?????

      No, that was a nice spin on Big Tech having reached the bog zone.

      I liked it.

    3. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      Re: Bog Zech?????

      Back to the car industry - the collapse in the 70s didn't deliver new car companies in the west, so much as open the door to competition from countries with lower wages and more committed workers.

      More committed, maybe. Less unionized, certainly.

      That's why unions are a double-edged sword. They start as a mutual society, genuinely trying to help their members, getting better/fairer conditions, etc. All too often, once they taste the power that they have they devolve into an organization whose main aim is to increase the power and wealth of their leaders, while demanding ever larger pay packets for ever less work for their dues-paying members, until they eventually price themselves out of the market. That's what happened in the 70s and is still happening today, with the railway unions for example.

      In many ways it parallels the complaints in this article, an organization becomes so large & powerful that it stops serving its customers, and focusses on serving its leaders, until someone demands that someone (usually government) must Do Something.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Bog Zech?????

        "All too often, once they taste the power that they have they devolve into an organization whose main aim is to increase the power and wealth of their leaders, while demanding ever larger pay packets for ever less work for their dues-paying members"

        I think they come to regard the second part as optional if not an encumbrance to pursuing the first. That at least was my experience.

      2. jmch Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Bog Zech?????

        "they devolve into an organization whose main aim is to increase the power and wealth of their leaders"

        Organisations tend to self-perpetuate beyond their initial scope. Oscar Wilde put it delightfully: "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy"

        1. Someone Else Silver badge

          Re: Bog Zech?????

          Organisations tend to self-perpetuate beyond their initial scope.

          cf. Illinois Tollway.

        2. zuckzuckgo

          Re: Bog Zech?????

          By effectively bringing auto workers of all major manufacturers into one union, North American auto unions became a bigger monopoly than any of the car companies. So the focus of the industry became about satisfying the unions rather than customers / car owners. It took outside competition to effectively break that monopoly.

          What we need is effective anti-monopoly laws that can be applied to both companies and unions so that neither can can completely monopolize critical market segments.

      3. tiggity Silver badge

        Re: Bog Zech?????

        Very simplified view on the unions.

        A lot of trade relations issues were (and often still are) due to UK mania for CEOs & general high up managers often seemingly selected on the basis that they could start a fight in an empty room, i.e. not people known for negotiation, seeing any view other than their own.

        This in turn typically led to similar more aggressive approach from the unions, so creating a death spiral of intransigence, counter productive to the health of the industry affected.

        As for railway unions - you do realise most of the RMT (Mick Lynch union) members are primarily relatively low paid staff cleaners, ticket staff, etc. Most "high paid" staff e.g. drivers, are in ASLEF. Not that drivers are overpaid, a safety critical job, customer lives at stake & still massively less well paid than an MP (& drivers get mandatory, frequent drink & drugs tests & failure = dismissal, would love to see that applied to MPs!). Most of the disputes are over working conditions issues, e.g. removing guards from trains saves money by shedding jobs (so more cash to shareholders) but this is at the risk of safety. Similar issues have involved working hours / shift plans of staff that can affect safety (knackered staff not conducive to safe railways).

        We need to get away from the idea that manual labour is unskilled and should be badly paid, plenty of it needs a lot of skill but the rewards are dismal, train drivers a rare exception in getting decent pay for a "blue collar" job.

        I know some drivers, I would not like the job, unsociable hours, a lot of time away from family, peoples lives dependent on your actions - not to mention the zero tolerance drink and drug tests, no chance of risking a couple of pints the night before a shift as blood alcohol fail levels really low, so quite an impact on social life if you like meeting pals in the pub for a beer or 2.(& no chance of getting away with illegal recreational drugs for those so inclined, plus fairly harsh on a variety of prescription meds too on their tests)

        1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

          Re: Bog Zech?????

          Very simplified view on the unions.

          Based on 50-odd years experience.

          creating a death spiral of intransigence, counter productive to the health of the industry affected.

          And is why most people in the UK won't join a union.

          you do realise most of the RMT (Mick Lynch union) members are primarily relatively low paid staff cleaners, ticket staff, etc.

          According to their own figures 45% of their membership earn more than £35,000/year

          Not that drivers are overpaid, a safety critical job, customer lives at stake & still massively less well paid than an MP

          No argument that many MPs are overpaid for what they do, but so are train drivers. They earn twice what bus drivers do, for example, but driving a bus is a far more stressful and safety-critical job than driving a train. Trains are so automated these days that it's difficult for a driver to take a dangerous action without the automated systems halting the train & signalling the problem.

          We need to get away from the idea that manual labour is unskilled and should be badly paid

          Not a question of "should be", it's the usual question of supply& demand. If a job requires nothing more than a strong back there's unlikely to be a shortage of candidates, so inevitably more competition & people who accept lower wages. Unions aren't going to change that.

          not to mention the zero tolerance drink and drug tests, no chance of risking a couple of pints the night before a shift as blood alcohol fail levels really low, so quite an impact on social life if you like meeting pals in the pub for a beer or 2.(& no chance of getting away with illegal recreational drugs for those so inclined,

          Sounds very reasonable, the same rules should apply to anyone serving the public (yes, including MPs and civil servants).

          It doesn't really change my initial argument that unions, like other powerful groups, tend to devolve to become self-serving.

          1. notyetanotherid

            Re: Bog Zech?????

            > According to their own figures 45% of their membership earn more than £35,000/year

            £35000pa being approximately the UK median annual salary in 2023. With 55% below that median, RMT members are thus relatively low paid.

            > No argument that many MPs are overpaid for what they do, but so are train drivers.

            > it's the usual question of supply& demand.

            You have answered why train drivers are relatively well paid, and it has little to do with their unions. When the government, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the railways needed to be in the private sector following the dogma that competition would improve services and reduce ticket prices and cost to taxpayers, they (wittingly or unwittingly) created a market for train drivers. The train operating cos would rather poach a qualified driver from another company by paying them more, than to train up new drivers, creating a salary spiral chasing a limited resource.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Bog Zech?????

              "When the government, in their infinite wisdom"

              Let us not forget that this was all driven by EEC directive 91/440/EEC which was intended to encourage competition and drive improvements in rail transport by effectively getting rid of the monopolistic setup that was British Rail. Secondly was the fact John Major was an idiot.

              1. 43300 Silver badge

                Re: Bog Zech?????

                "et us not forget that this was all driven by EEC directive 91/440/EEC which was intended to encourage competition and drive improvements in rail transport by effectively getting rid of the monopolistic setup that was British Rail. Secondly was the fact John Major was an idiot."

                Not really - that could have been satisfied by splitting the infrastructure and operations into separate units for accounting purposes (and that indeed was what many countries did do) - the UK could simply have Created 'BR Operations' and 'BR Infrastructure' for legal purposes, and continued to market it all as 'BR'. After the demise of Railtrack, the privatised infrastructure operator, they effectively re-created 'BR Infrastructure', but called it 'Network Rail'.

                The directive was mainly aimed to ease cross-border trains, which doesn't really apply to the UK with it being an island. Yes, it also opened the door for open access operators, but as those have to meet a fairly stringent test showing that they are serving an underserved market, or creating new business (i.e. not primarily abstracting revenue from existing operators), there are very few cases where it's financially viable. In the UK, there have only really been three which have been successful (all operating partly on the East Coast mainline), plus one which failed, in the whole post-BR era to date.

                The responsibility for the railway mess can't be laid solely at the door of the Tories. They planned it and started the process, but Labour had it in their maifesto to reverse it if elected. Of course, as soon as they were elected they promptly abandoned that pledge.

                1. MachDiamond Silver badge

                  Re: Bog Zech?????

                  "The responsibility for the railway mess can't be laid solely at the door of the Tories. They planned it and started the process, but Labour had it in their maifesto to reverse it if elected. Of course, as soon as they were elected they promptly abandoned that pledge."

                  The only difference between any of them is their blazer badge and who pays them off with briefcases full of cash.

              2. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

                Re: Bog Zech?????

                How is it that EU nations manage to have a well run, efficient and not too expensive to use, rail system then?

                Can it be that UK's well connected political elite has abused the system for personal gain?

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Bog Zech?????

                  How is it that EU nations manage to have a well run, efficient and not too expensive to use, rail system then?

                  Massive subsidies. For example, SNCF in France got 17 billion euros in taxpayer subsidies in 2020, 3bn more than in 2016. Of that 17bn, 9bn were direct subsidies for running costs.

          2. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: Bog Zech?????

            "no chance of risking a couple of pints the night before a shift as blood alcohol fail levels really low,

            That would depend on the job. If you are a heavy equipment operator or a surgeon, being slightly impaired can be a big problem. If you are a MD at a company, being half out of your skull might not make any noticeable difference in job performance one way or the other in many cases. I expect there are plenty of people that can put cabbages in a crate to send off to a store after a serious bender the night before or even after a small indulgence back in their car during morning break. The person driving the crates of cabbages around the facility with the forklift, not so much.

        2. TheMeerkat Silver badge

          Re: Bog Zech?????

          > We need to get away from the idea that manual labour is unskilled

          The labour of a cleaner is unskilled compared, say, to the labour of a computer programmer. It is a fact. And none of your lefty ideology is going to change it.

          1. LybsterRoy Silver badge

            Re: Bog Zech?????

            My initial thought was to upvote you. Before I did my mind changed to I should downvote you.

            The point you are missing is that skill sets may be different but may still exist. If you doubt this spend 8 hours as a cleaner. Society has chosen to reward one set of skills in a different way to another but both are valuable. Looking at the output of some computer programmers I am led to believe that they would be better off as a cleaner. Mainly on the basis of they wouldn't be able to make my life so miserable with their wonderful efforts.

            ps: I'm not a lefty

            1. stiine Silver badge
              Facepalm

              Re: Bog Zech?????

              All telephone sanitisers, please stand up.

          2. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: Bog Zech?????

            "The labour of a cleaner is unskilled compared, say, to the labour of a computer programmer. It is a fact. And none of your lefty ideology is going to change it."

            There is no contradiction in saying somebody is a skilled cleaner. I see it as mostly a supply and demand issue. A really smart person can be an excellent cleaner as well as somebody that dropped out of school at age 10 and there's a greater supply of people at the latter end of the scale. The gag about buying bespoke rocks on the way into the arena for the stoning is a play on this theme.

        3. stiine Silver badge
          Flame

          Re: Bog Zech?????

          They run on fuc*ing rails. A good railroad engineer only needs to be able to see around corners, and know when to brake. That job should have been automated into oblivion decades ago.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Bog Zech?????

            Indeed! The automation is less likely to fall asleep at the controls and go too fast for the track conditions causing the train to derail.

            (yes I am aware that there are supposed to be safeguards for this but it still happens)

          2. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: Bog Zech?????

            "That job should have been automated into oblivion decades ago."

            Say that in earshot of the union bosses and you might go missing. They very forcefully don't want that sort of discussion taking place.

        4. James Anderson

          Re: Bog Zech?????

          Call me cynical but the management of the truly horrible UK railway network don't like running trains. What interests them is the thousands of square miles of property that could be sold of if they did not have to carry ungrateful passengers in ancient rolling stock. How much would Kings Cross sell for as a development site?

      4. Cliffwilliams44 Silver badge

        Re: Bog Zech?????

        In the US, Unions are mostly controlled by various arms of the Mafia. Be it the Italians, the Irish, etc. Whose motivation is always self-interest!

        Unfortunately, we now have a president who is also controlled by the Mafia. Whose father was a mob stooge, was put into the Senate by his father's mob connections and is working for the cartels in cooperation with the mafia!

        1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

          Re: Bog Zech?????

          There are other unions than the "dock workers union" or other made famous by movies.

      5. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Bog Zech?????

        "until someone demands that someone (usually government) must Do Something."

        The politicians then have some debates on what to do and how to do it that's high on rhetoric and low on useful discussion. When/if some legislation comes out, the miscreants that were the real target wind up with carve outs that make them exempt from whatever is passed. This is also ignoring that laws had already existed that would apply but they haven't been used for ages and over time, they were just ignored. The goal for the politicians was to be SEEN doing something, they did something so they can point to it and say something has been done, please donate to my reelection campaign.

        I would like to see term limits and politician pages on Rotten Tomatoes with how well they did during the stint feeding at the public trough. Maybe some peer pressure would come into doing well enough during the short time you were allowed to hold office so your record doesn't live on portraying you as a useless shit forever and ever.

  5. Headley_Grange Silver badge

    Root Cause

    First deal with the stock markets that are short term and don't give a toss what they invest in other than to demand constantly increasing sales, profits and dividends. If a company misses its forecast by a couple of percentage points but still delivers $billions in profit and dividends, their share pirice gets hammered by the markets. The size of the consumer/customer market and how much money they've got isn't growing exponentiallly for established, mature services so the only method that companies have got to satisfy the demands of the shareholders is to invent a new market or buy another company. The consolidations are mostly driven by stock markets obsessed with constant growth.

    How to fix it? Dunno. Maybe prohibitive taxes on short-term share dealings and dividends or on CEO bonuses that are dependent on share price?

    1. Greybearded old scrote
      Devil

      Re: Root Cause

      The stock market was created to fund expensive startups. (Originally vessels to sail east for tea and spice, or for the foul triangular trade.) Why do they still have power after that phase? Because they are rich enough that the law of, "Because I say so" applies.

      As much as I wouldn't take it literally, there's a reason why Cory's website icon is a guillotine.

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Root Cause

        "Why do they still have power after that phase?"

        It's because the IPO is a good way for investors to be given a big payday AND still hold a fair amount of ownership in the company. If the company doesn't seem like it's going to last that long, the venture capitalists and pump it up and garner big return as they run for the hills. It's also a carrot to get people to work unholy hours sacrificing their health and family life for a possible big pay off down the road.

        There's still the times when going public is useful for ramping up quickly to earn money while a patent is still valid or before the competition with more money can make a copy for less and capitalize on the work of developing an idea into a product. That sort of thing happens a bunch with crowd funding. A company, often in China, will see a good product being pitched on a crowd funding site and will have that item in production and shipping by the container load before the funding drive closes.

    2. Pascal Monett Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: Root Cause

      Totally agree.

      The stock market needs to stop being the one-stop money-making machine for a few privileged people.

      We need to relearn the term investment. An investment is you putting money in a company because you believe in it and want to participate in its future.

      As such, anyone buying stock should be mandated by law to hold onto those stocks for ten years. If you don't believe the company will improve in ten year's time, you have no business buying its stock.

      That will put to rest all the useless drama around the Dow Jones and build a society where Capitalism regains some amount of laurels, which it has utterly trashed these days.

      As for CEO bonuses, that is not public money. If the shareholders are stupid enough to award them, it's their problem.

      1. Headley_Grange Silver badge

        Re: Root Cause

        "As for CEO bonuses, that is not public money. If the shareholders are stupid enough to award them, it's their problem."

        If the board's bonuses are related to the share price then all the board cares about is share price, to the extent that it's better for them to use profit to buy the company's own shares and drive the price up instead of using it to fund R&D to make the company better in the long run. It's FUBB that there's any intrinsic benefit in using company money to buy company shares.

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Root Cause

          "If the board's bonuses are related to the share price then all the board cares about is share price, to the extent that it's better for them to use profit to buy the company's own shares and drive the price up instead of using it to fund R&D to make the company better"

          There are times when it makes sense for a company to buy back shares. It's not necessarily better to shovel money into R&D if, for example, you are a car company and the CEO wants to build humanoid robots. Spending money to bring new models to market or develop technology so the company can build better cars faster and cheaper, sure.

          There's a certain management cost for every share of stock issued. If it looks like the company would have fewer or the same number of shareholders after a buyback, that could mean savings on administration. The price per share should go up if the company's market cap remains the same and that might reduce the number of small shareholders.

          It's not a universal that stock buybacks are bad.

      2. Dr Dan Holdsworth
        Boffin

        Re: Root Cause

        The stock market isn't a money-making machine for just a few people; it is also where our pension money is invested, to make it grow in time for our retirement. The stock market by way of investment bonds is also where most of my personal savings are kept and for precisely the same reason: I want that money to grow.

        Now, if Baillie-Gifford could please get their mind and investments back in order...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Root Cause

      First problem is that there's no such thing as the stock market. If the one in their country applies too many restrictions, businesses simply move/list elsewhere.

    4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Root Cause

      "How to fix it? Dunno."

      Better education about the fact that exponential growth and the early stages of sigmoidal growth are indistinguishable but the first is a construct of pure mathematics and the second is all that reality can provide. Learn to be content when you reach the top of the S.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @Doctor Syntax - Re: Root Cause

        Sorry but you can't educate against the desire to make money.

        "Greed is eternal" - Ferengi 10th rule of acquisition.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Headley_Grange - Re: Root Cause

      Naah! I believe a Bolshevik revolution could bring the much needed fresh air. It will be like a forest fire that renews the ecosystem.

      Wait! Stop running for the hills, I was just joking.

    6. ldo

      Re: their share pirice gets hammered by the markets

      Then the savvy types step in and buy it up off the dumb ones at the bargain price.

      So you see, that kind of problem solves itself.

    7. Headley_Grange Silver badge

      Re: Root Cause

      Apposite - Google's (Alphabet) Q423 figures today (Wed) .....

      "The Google parent company reported a miss on predicted advertising revenue at $65.52bn compared to $65.8bn, but beat predictions for overall revenue at $86.31bn compared to $85.36bn" - Graun

      ..... resulted in a 5% share drop in overnight trading.

      That's a miss of 0.43% vs forecast on advertising revernue in spite of overall revenue being up. Not good enough for some "owners" of the company, apparently, who sold their shares as a result.

    8. LybsterRoy Silver badge

      Re: Root Cause

      There was a report many years ago in response to moaning about how much MDs (we didn't have CEOs back then) were paid that said that MDs should have their rewards more closely aligned with the shareholders so they started being given share options. Worked out well didn't it?

  6. 0laf Silver badge
    Black Helicopters

    It's everywhere

    You can see enshittification everywhere, not just tech. I just never had a word for it until now. In politics, in basic utility services (water/sewage in the England being a prime example), in cars, clothing everything. You can see the same trend, shittier service delivered by fewer more overworked underpaid staff for ever increasing prices. AI for many companies is just another way to push this further, a way to ditch underpaid staff completely, deliver even shittier levels of service and extract ever more money.

    And it's all backed up by a government and right wring press that gaslights citizens to belive that they should only ever be paid less (real terms), should work harder and if they don't like it they are lazy bastards deserving of destitution.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's everywhere

      I think you will find it is a left leaning media gaslighting people into believing things are somehow worse.

      Anyone remember just how bad and dirty the railways were in the 70s and 80s? The little poop and bogroll piles on the tracks where someone flushed in the station? Fish have returned to rivers that were basically open sewers less than 40 years ago.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: It's everywhere

        "Fish have returned to rivers that were basically open sewers less than 40 years ago."

        It will need some pressure to maintain that and stop enshittification literally returning.

      2. jmch Silver badge

        Re: It's everywhere

        "I think you will find it is a left leaning media gaslighting people into believing things are somehow worse."

        Really??? I would have thought it's more the conservatives who are perennially stuck in "the world is going to pot, and things used to be better in my days" mode.

        More seriously, it's perfectly normal human behaviour to generally remember our youth more fondly, and both left and right wings gaslight everyone else with this tactic, just that they are both very selective in what topics, according to them, were much better back in the day.

        For example, it used to be that I had to wait weeks to get some government document or other, or having to queue in person for hours to do many things that I can quickly and conveniently do at home online. Equally, safety and security is much better and crime is much reduced in the last 20-30 years, in spite of all the doom-mongering meaning that many people don't really believe it.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: It's everywhere

          My childhood spanned the late 70s into 80s and things in the UK were not good. My big sis lived in Bethnal Green and it was grim! The entrance to the tube station was usually full of rubbish that had blown down the stairs. Most tube stations were like that at the time. I also remember the houses of parliament being completely black. Battersea power station was still producing power. FFS a coal power station in the middle of a city!

          Where I grew up had a small park area but you could not use it for much for fear of stepping in a dog turd. And you avoided it all together after it had been mowed as the mower just splattered the turds EVERYWHERE.

      3. Headley_Grange Silver badge

        Re: It's everywhere

        Yeah, I remember all that about the railways - and I used them extensively in the 80s cos I couldn't afford a car. But I also remember guaranteed connections, which meant if your train was late they held the connecting train until yours got in. I remember that I could take my bike for free on any train all over the country by just chucking it in the guard's van instead of having to book a space (and sometimes pay extra) on one of the trains that still allows bikes and then spend ages searching for the 4 available slots which will be blocked by passengers and luggage. I remember being able to upgrade my 2nd class ticket to first by paying 50p on some off-peak services. I remember just walking up and getting on trains without having to worry if I'd booked the right ticket for the right train at the right off-peak period with the right railcard. I remember a proper buffet car, with beer, hot bacon sarnies and tea from a proper pot all of which, in spite of the piss that was taken about BR food, was massively better than the pre-packed and powdered shit that comes off the trolley today.

        I remember grotty trains and stations with stinky bogs and bolshy staff which really did consider itself to be a genuine service for travelling passengers, not a profit-centre** for captured "customers" and, as someone who still uses trains a lot, if someone offered me the option to go back to the service we had in the 80s I'd bite their hand off.

        **The platform caff on my local station has been closed for over a year because the commercial rent they "have to charge" put the last one out of business and they haven't found a tenant to take it on. They'd rather leave it closed than drop the rent, presumably cos they can use it as a write-down on the books.

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: It's everywhere

          "**The platform caff on my local station has been closed for over a year because the commercial rent they "have to charge" put the last one out of business and they haven't found a tenant to take it on. They'd rather leave it closed than drop the rent, presumably cos they can use it as a write-down on the books."

          It's not just the rents, but the regs. It can be like a shop in a mall where if you don't open by a certain time or shut too early, you get fined. I remember one food stall where there was some issue in the kitchen so somebody ran out and bought a box of biscuits so they could show they were open and doing business to avoid a fine. There can also be loads of inspection requirements and having to submit lists of the products you will sell and receive permission for each one in case something might cause offense. It's endless and better to have a cafe that's within a short walk of the station so people can buy their morning coffee and buns and shop owner can close up until the people return in the evening if there isn't much business during the day.

        2. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

          Re: It's everywhere

          "I remember grotty trains and stations"

          It's not that much better now. Just people donte have very high expectations. Brits are bit like that.

      4. martinusher Silver badge

        Re: It's everywhere

        I do recall the railways of the 1970s. I used to travel on them. I used to travel between London and Manchester a fair bit. The journey took about the same length of time, about two and a half hours. I used to arrive at the station without booking weeks in advance, buy a cheap day return for less than twenty pounds and sit in a seat in the (quiet, comfortable) train both ways. These days all that's changed is that the seating is a bit less comfortable (when you can find it) and the entire fare structure is designed to maximize yield from the passengers (sorry, 'clients') to the point of lunacy where as the mayor pointed out a full fare ticket is somewhat more pricey than an air ticket to India.

        Obviously not all trains on the network back then were as modern as these but times change and along with them there's upgrades to the network and rolling stock. Back in the 60s, for example, the most common way of getting between Manchester and London was the Midland route through Derby -- a lot more scenic but you had over four hours to enjoy it. You expect improvements over fifty years and not just to the quality of the coffee that you can buy.

        The same goes with everything else that was privatized. All privatization has done is allow financial types to extract value from that built up by people over the years. (Manchester lost its wholly owned and paid for water system, for example -- these days its the same system but with entire financial superstructure dedicated to pulling as much money out of the cashflow as possible.) Its certainly a quick and easy route to make money for those who can't stand the pain of investing and patiently building up a business (why build when you can steal?) but it has never been in the public interest.

        1. Headley_Grange Silver badge

          Re: It's everywhere

          In the 80s I lived north of London and had a girlfriend who lived south of London. Neither of us had cars, although if we did it would have taken longer to drive than to get the train. On Friday night I used to cycle from work to the station, get the train with my bike, cycle across London then get the train out of London and cycle to her village. On Sunday night (or v. early Monday mornings sometimes) I reversed it. Logistically it was as simple as that - buy a return, get the first train going my way and put the bike in the guard's van. Today I'd have to book four trains - probably with 4 separate tickets - weeks in advance just to be sure of getting a bike space - assuming the trains have them (not all of them do). I'd have to leave lots of buffer before each train journey just in case of traffic, punctures (no kevlar tyres in those days), etc, so the 3hr journey door-door would probably end up as 4 or 5 hours with lots of time sitting waiting around if nothing went wrong because I'd have to be a on particular train, not "the next one" like it used to be. The system now removes all flexibility and is designed to grudgingly accept a few bikes but make it as difficult as possible and punish you if anything goes wrong.

          Today if I tried the same trip and missed any of the trains or one was cancelled I'd be buggered - stuck somewhere with my bike and if that was in London there'd be no quick way of getting home or to her house - meaning I'd have to leave the bike in London and possibly have to buy another ticket. It simply isn't be possible today to spontaneously head off with your bike on the train like it used to be in the 80s. If you never had that sort of flexibilty than I guess you won't miss it, but I think that compared to then the current "service" is fucked up and such a long way from the public transport service it used to be.

        2. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

          Re: It's everywhere

          buy a cheap day return for less than twenty pounds

          20 quid in 1975 is about 200 in today's terms. Not sure I'd call that a cheap day return!

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

          2. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: It's everywhere

            "20 quid in 1975 is about 200 in today's terms. Not sure I'd call that a cheap day return!"

            Whether anything can be called cheap or not depends on what it's being compared to. A toaster at the big box store for £7.77 might be called cheap (inexpensive), but if it fails after toasting one loaf of bread and you didn't keep the receipt, it's suddenly very expensive. If it cost £200 in petrol, parking and tolls, a train for the same amount could be called cheap. It could also be called cheap if it was faster to take the train. I can visit my mother by car or train (the car is more expensive on the weekends when the train is discounted) and it takes 3 hours each way. The most it's ever taken on the train is 4 (once) and 6-1/2 by car (a few times). When I take the train, I'll bring a coffee/tea, a bun and my tablet to watch a movie or listen to a book. Every so often they'll be somebody interesting to talk to. The overall experience is better on the train so even when it's more expensive, to me, it's better value for money.

        3. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: It's everywhere

          "All privatization has done is allow financial types to extract value from that built up by people over the years. "

          It's always going to mean a big price increase for the riders. A lot of public transportation doesn't need to break even from the fares. A city tram service means less parking needs to be built and maintained for people to do business in the city center. The city gets funds from taxes collected in combination with less costs for infrastructure. I'm more than happy to park on the outskirts and take public transportation if it's convenient, on-time and comfortable rather than sit in bumper to bumper traffic with my eyes swiveling around to find some parking. Those car parks would also be easier to maintain over scores of many smaller ones. Private transportation companies are looking to make lots of money to well compensate their executives and board members. When it doesn't pan out, they close shop which can lead to serious problems until somebody (government) rushes in to get something in place before the city comes to a standstill.

          1. 43300 Silver badge

            Re: It's everywhere

            It's also about the aims of society - good public transport has all sorts of wider benefits.

            But we can see how it's viewed by politicians and much of the media in this country by the terminology used - spending on railways is often 'subsidy' whereas spending on roads is 'investment'.

            As regards the trains themselves, over the past decade the local and commuter trains (especially in Northern-land) have improved dramatically. The disappearance of the Pacers is not something regretted by anyone except their few fans! Long-distance trains have gone the other way, however. The many slight variants of the Hitachi AT200 which have appeared over the past few years are a case in point - crap seats, don't ride very well, no buffet on most of them (including some which do long distances such as London-Penzance).

            And one of the most off-putting things of all about UK trains these days: the fucking announcements. A constant stream of pointless drivel, which seems to have got louder with each year, On lines such as my local one, which has lots of stations fairly close together, it's nearly constant as the new trains clearly automatically start the loop again after the doors have opened.

            1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

              Re: It's everywhere

              But we can see how it's viewed by politicians and much of the media in this country by the terminology used - spending on railways is often 'subsidy' whereas spending on roads is 'investment'.

              Spending in infrastructure tends to be considered as "investment" in both cases, road or rail. The big difference is when it comes to running costs - rail ticket prices are subsidised from tax money, yet for motorists half the pump price of fuel is tax & duty that goes into the treasury coffers.

      5. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

        Re: It's everywhere

        That it was bad In the 70s is no reason to ignore that it was much better in 2015, and now is getting worse again.

        Welcome to Enshittified Brexshit Britain.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: It's everywhere

          That it was bad In the 70s is no reason to ignore that it was much better in 2015, and now is getting worse again.

          Passenger-mile numbers reached their lowest point during nationalisation last time. Since privatisation those numbers have steadily climbed, to a peak (much higher than during the British Rail days) just before COVID. Obviously they dipped during the pandemic, but are climbing again.

    2. Oddlegs

      Re: It's everywhere

      Regarding water/sewage our beaches and waterways have never been cleaner. All of the fuss over the last couple of years was sparked by us increasing the monitoring of sewage releases whereas in the past we just silently let them happen. It's not really a surprise that when you count things you end up with a bigger number than if you don't count things.

      Regarding cars they're safer, more reliable and massively more efficient than they were in the past all whilst not increasing in price in real terms.

      Clothing? Well maybe that has gone down in quality but there's no denying that, in many cases, it's ridiculously cheap nowadays. 40 years ago a pair of Levis was about $25. Adjusted for inflation that'd be $90 in today's money but instead they go for half that. Spend $90 on some jeans today and you'll probably get some of similar quality to that vintage pair.

      It's easy to talk down capitalism, the west and, particularly, 'Brexit Britain' but the reality is that in almost all ways things still continue to get better for the vast majority of society

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: It's everywhere

        On the whole things get better if there's a profit in it for someone and stay better only if the profits continue to grow or if regulation keeps them better. The nature of things is that growth can't be indefinite so at some point profits will only continue to grow by cutting costs and letting standards slip. That's were regulation comes in to protect things. A saner world, which would need much less regulation, would be one where companies could be valued by their prospects for growth or their ability to earn steady profits and expected to move from one to the other.

        1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

          Re: It's everywhere

          Doctor Syntax,

          Profit doesn't always have to increase. Or even stay stupidly high. This is just where people mistake news about the tech sector for how economics works in the rest of the economy. Which doesn't have vast untapped resources of venture capital money - or come to that vast untapped numbers of hubristic "thought-leaders" eager to relieve those VCs of some of that cash and launch massive start-ups. Some of which even have a rough idea how they might just make a profit in twenty years time.

          Most small and medium sized companies, in mature industries, just bimble along doing what they've always done. With plans to maybe grow a bit, or launch a new product (maybe even start a new division) - but not expecting the market to change a huge amount over the next decade. They tend to take on a few new projects and new staff, and get a bit fatter, up until a recession comes, then if that's not working out, might cut costs a bit, but in general aren't trying to re-invent the wheel.

          What's unusual about, say Google, is that they started off small, but with huge ambition, and access to loads of money. A quick (ahem!) Google suggests that they started off with $100k of initial funding and within a year had had two more rounds and got first $1m and then $25m. Try raising that kind of money to start a building services engineering firm or a small chain of restaurants? Of course it wouldn't make sense to invest that money, because even if they were successful, the returns wouldn't be big enough to justify it. Whereas initial investors in Google did pretty well for themselves.

          But those other kinds of businesses (and whole industries) carry on nicely on making their steady profits. The problem for Google is that the people at the top probably don't know how to settle for what they've got. Just accept that you've build a huge search monopoly, keep taking the profits, take a healthy cut and give the rest to your shareholders as dividends. Partly they were quite right to invest in smartphones. There could have been a competitor, with all that smartphone data, access to the advertisers and the possibility of doing things like local search and so competing successfully with Google and damaging their search monopoly.

          But how much cash have they poured into self-driving cars? Or starting a social network. Or building a basic, but not very profitable, office suite. They still make 90% of their profits from placing adverts next to search results.

          I guess here we might praise Apple? At one point they had a $150 billion cash pile. But managed to resist temptation to blow it on a buying-spree of other companies. And although there are often rumours that they're looking at launching into new markets, they've mostly stuck to their knitting, making computers, plus tablets and phones. Admittedly the correct response to having that huge a pile of cash is to only do it if you have a reason to use it, or return it to your shareholders. So at least they might do something useful with it. But at leas they didn't blow it on buying Facebook or trying to re-invent the car or something.

          1. LybsterRoy Silver badge

            Re: It's everywhere

            What are you doing on here? You are far to sensible - have an upvote.

          2. Someone Else Silver badge

            Re: It's everywhere

            Seems to me that if you want to be the kind of business that can "carry on nicely making their steady profits", that you need to be (and stay) privately held.

      2. Headley_Grange Silver badge

        Re: It's everywhere

        "..beaches and waterways have never been cleaner"

        Then they must have been in a shite state before.

        https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/30/english-rivers-pollution-sewage-agriculture-uk

        TLDR "Eighty-three per cent of English rivers contain evidence of high pollution caused by sewage and agricultural waste, according to the largest citizen science water testing project ever to take place in the UK."

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: It's everywhere

          Yes they were bloody awful! And the 'science' in that article is testing for a single chemical marker that is likely to be predominantly agri runoff and not sewage.

          The pipework that dumps the poop into the sea dates back 100 years or more. This is nothing new but the technology for testing has become easier, cheaper and quicker along with a general expectation from the public that when they go to the beach they are not having to watch out for the turds washing up.

          1. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: It's everywhere

            "The pipework that dumps the poop into the sea dates back 100 years or more."

            Robbie Coltrane did a program where he was on a steam powered ship whose original tasking was to load up with waste water from the sewers and take it out to sea to be dumped. A big tanker full of jobies. I'm only surmising that schedules were based on which way the tide was going when they opened the valves.

        2. Dr Dan Holdsworth
          Boffin

          Re: It's everywhere

          Actually there are several ways of looking for pollution, depending on what you're actually interested in.

          If you want really clean chalk streams, then you want to reduce phosphate levels to a bare minimum along with nitrate and pretty much everything else, which is all very well but actually quite difficult to do since it doesn't take much extra phosphate to get plant growth going.

          If on the other hand you're looking for grosser levels of pollution, then nitrate is one way to go but this too will mostly detect agricultural run-off. The indicator for sewage run-off is to look for faecal coliform bacteria, which are the really, really common bacteria that all mammals excrete from their guts. These are very common hence easier to find than the much rarer but more damaging actual pathogens.

      3. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

        Re: It's everywhere

        "Regarding water/sewage our beaches and waterways have never been cleaner. "

        That's going down the drain -fast. Do try to keep up.

    3. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: It's everywhere

      "AI for many companies is just another way to push this further, a way to ditch underpaid staff completely, deliver even shittier levels of service and extract ever more money."

      This is where this sort of thing is weird. Why spend loads of time and money to be able to dispose of the lowest paid staff? I can see it if it then means a reduction in the next layer up and again another layer higher. Lower headcounts on the front lines where the work is done should lead to lower headcounts of the people that supervise them.

      I can think of some situations where the lowest people on the totem pole are a bottleneck. Automating them out of existence might mean better utilization of other assets. The down side is that if the machine break down, there might not be a way to quickly throw a bunch of people at the problem as least temporarily.

    4. Roj Blake Silver badge

      Re: It's everywhere

      Water privatisation has led to literal enshittification.

  7. Big_Boomer

    Eternal Growth

    The root problem is the idea of eternal growth. Shareholders expect the same or better dividend than last year, even if last years was a freak, and the CEOs have no choice but to try to deliver because they are the same in wanting more money, more, more, MORE!! ALL HAIL THE GREAT GOD OF GREED! Most people want more, but the big difference with shareholders is that they get to VOTE to give themselves more and they don't care if it ****s up the company they have shares in, as they can always sell those and buy something else.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Eternal Growth

      Rapidly growing companies may not turn a profit for years but are valued for their potential when they stop growing. I'd expect anyone with a handle of Big_Boomer to have reached a point in life where continuing profits are very desirable as they pay the pension. The problem shareholders are the activists who want to take a short-term, damaging profit and get out.

      1. Big_Boomer

        Re: Eternal Growth

        I have no problems with growth, and even continuous growth, but it will never be eternal. Yes, short-term investors are a problem but so are the longer term investors who expect exponential growth and push Boards and CEOs into making sub-optimal decisions. As for my handle, although I am right at the end of the Baby Boomer generation, my handle comes from my use of "Boomshanka" in email signatures years and years ago.

    2. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: Eternal Growth

      "The root problem is the idea of eternal growth. Shareholders expect the same or better dividend than last year, even if last years was a freak"

      Hmmmm. The stocks our family trust has are dividend stocks, not growth stocks. They tend to be different sorts of companies. A company undergoing lots of growth is less likely to pay a dividend since they can use the money to fund more growth. A more mature company or one in a mature industry can often pay a dividend since there isn't the drive to grow as much as remain relevant and optimize operations for the best profits. Our tactic is to find boring companies that don't have to be slaves to fashion which can lead to giant upticks and spectacular crashes. We like companies that make things like washers (metal stampings, not for clothes). If they specialize in quality for a market like aerospace, more the better. No matter how bad Boeing screws up, that washer company isn't going to be much impacted even if Boeing is one of their customers. I've visited that particular company to check them out and it's nuts to see barrels and barrels of stampings with an inventory tag that reads 1,798,880ea or so on the top of each one. It's not a product that going to be made obsolete by some "disruptor" and the company pays a regular and reasonable dividend on the stock. Tortoise v. Hare.

  8. Mint Sauce
    Thumb Down

    "footballer (or soccer in Freedom Language)"

    I see the enshittification of El Reg continues apace... :-/

    1. abend0c4 Silver badge

      Quite. It obviously should be "soccerer".

      1. Ordinary Donkey

        The soccerer's apprentice?

      2. Jan 0 Silver badge

        Surely "soccerizer"?

      3. Dronius

        Soccerist?

    2. Greybearded old scrote
      Joke

      Well

      That was slower than I expected.

    3. Dan 55 Silver badge

      I'm shocked the reference wasn't changed from Best to Babe Ruth.

  9. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

    Does old Cory know what he's talking about?

    He's very good at making these wide, sweeping statements, as if they're somehow some kind of philosophical or ecomic laws. But what's he got to back them up? What research has he done on similar stages in other massive growth industries?

    For example, he laments how the tech industry wasn't united but the evil record industry was, hence the death of Napster. But what's the rest of the tech industry got to do with it? Napster died because their business model was to steal other peoples' stuff and... Profit. I don't see how say Oracle or Facebook had skin in that game, they weren't interested in the music industry. Other than that Oracle would like to defend intellectual property, because they sell software, and Facebook generally like to steal a litte of it, given they need content to put adverts next to, and don't generate any themselves.

    Partly we're looking at the results and chaos of another industrial revolution. Massive economic and social changes brought on by huge technological change have disrupted whole sectors of the economy and society. Would you not expect things to go wrong as well as right?

    I do agree with him that regulators and politicians have failed to use exisiting laws to rein in the big tech firms though. Google's use of its search and advertising monopoly to fund a move into the mobile market (in order to defend those monopolies from competition), by giving away Android for free destroyed Blackberry and Microsoft - who were unwilling to invest their own monopoly profits into doing the same thing. That was obvious in advance, and might have been stopped. It's not like the old railway booms of the mid 19th Century - the legal structures exist now.

    1. 42656e4d203239 Silver badge

      Re: Does old Cory know what he's talking about?

      >>by giving away Android for free destroyed Blackberry and Microsoft - who were unwilling to invest their own monopoly profits into doing the same thing

      Both Microsoft and Blackberry could have "done a Google" but didn't; as you say they were "unwilling to invest their own monopoly profits".

      So what makes Google bad (for giving away Android and destroying their competition)? the fact they 'gave away'1 Android or the fact that Microsoft and RIM/Blackberry didn't give away Mobile Windows/whatever Blackberry devices run on, when they could have done but chose not to?

      1Obviously Google didn't give away Android - they exchanged it for all the marketing data they could ever need...

      1. blackcat Silver badge

        Re: Does old Cory know what he's talking about?

        I think its more complex than just 'giving away android'. Both winphone and blackberry were aimed primarily at the business user.

        And Apple are doing very well and still in their walled garden.

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Does old Cory know what he's talking about?

          "And Apple are doing very well and still in their walled garden."

          A walled garden with really expensive tickets to get in.

          Is Apple/Tim Cook resting on their laurels at this point? Are they getting more converts to iOS? I never liked how locked down their mobile products are so while I use Apple laptops and desktops for most of my computing/online needs, I use a de-googled android phone and android tablets. The tablets are for the drone, camera control and showing images I've done to other people. I don't use them for online things. I also have Win7 pc's and a linux machine (the cheese grater has all three via VMware.) Different cars for different trips.

      2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: Does old Cory know what he's talking about?

        In the case of Microsoft, it was a level playing field. Both they and Google had the resources to do whatever they wanted. So no problem.

        But RIM didn't have another monopoly to abuse in order to generate profits to give their phones away for cheaper. So they were forced out of the market by competition that was cheaper than they could reasonably compete with. As is also true for Palm with their rather nice Pre phones.

        This destroyed competition and innovation, which now leaves us with just Apple and Google.

        Now RIM had taken their eye off the ball, as had Microsoft, so maybe they deserved to lose their mobile markets. Maybe they'd have been driven out of business by fair competition - but they faced unfair competition subsidised by Google's monopoly profits. Which, by the way, is illegal. But I certainly think that the market is poorer without Blackberry being available, they made some incredibly good hardware and software - which I personally dislike, but there's many people that would be better served if you could still get Blackberries. It would make Andrew Orlowski, formerly of this parish, a happy bunny anyway...

    2. blackcat Silver badge

      Re: Does old Cory know what he's talking about?

      "I do agree with him that regulators and politicians have failed to use exisiting laws to rein in the big tech firms though"

      Said regulators and politicians have become really rather wealthy from this. The govt to tech revolving door has become a viable alternative to the revolving door with the defence industry.

    3. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: Would you not expect things to go wrong as well as right?

      Good question. Just one thing : what exactly has gone right ?

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: Would you not expect things to go wrong as well as right?

        Pascal Monnet,

        what exactly has gone right ?

        This is the point where I feel the political discourse needs a serious sense of perspective reset.

        Google can be bloody annoying sometimes as a company. And I don't particularly like Android, in comparison with my old Windows Mobile 8 phone. But comparing these tools to what we had even 15 years ago suggests that an awful lot has gone right. I'd say Google search reached a peak about 10 years ago, and has been getting more polluted with computer-generated data and ads since. But it's still mostly very usable, and I'm starting to look at some of the alternatives to see if they're any better.

        But we've got loads of tools, a lot of them very cheap (or even free) that were science fiction 30 years ago.

        One other thing I agree with Doctorow on is that free is often a bad thing. Because a company with a pre-exisiting revenue stream can offer something for free - often backed by shitty advertising. Which makes it a lot harder for someone else to come along and offer a better paid product, and thus fund their innovation.

        Which also inevitably leads to enshittification - if the funding comes from VCs willing to give great service away at first, in hopes of finding a viable business model once they've got the customers. That's given us some expensive tech, but also quite a lot f expensive dead-ends like Uber and Groupon.

    4. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Does old Cory know what he's talking about?

      Napster died because their business model was to steal other peoples' stuff and... Profit

      So their problem was they were the one of the first and weren't big enough to survive the legal onslaught.

      1. doublelayer Silver badge

        Re: Does old Cory know what he's talking about?

        More that they were ridiculously obvious about it. While I'm sure people here have other companies they'd allege are making money by stealing, it usually takes at least one abstraction and has a contract in the middle. For example, Google makes money by stealing our data, but although I think that's true, they would argue that they have permission to get the data (I don't agree) and that they're only selling advertisements. Napster's business model was based around really obviously allowing people to download music they didn't have a right to download. They were only slightly less obvious about it than if The Pirate Bay decided to try to become big tech. You can't be that obvious about committing crimes if you don't want to get sued out of existence.

    5. Gene Cash Silver badge

      Re: Does old Cory know what he's talking about?

      I have never ever understood why Microsoft killed their phone division out of the blue like that.

      They're willing to invest billions in Xbox back when it was a very distant third, but they toss their phone business in the garbage like last week's milk.

      There was a time when I would have bought a Windows phone simply because it wasn't Apple or Google. As it is, Android is utter shite, but Apple is worse. And there really isn't a third choice.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Does old Cory know what he's talking about?

        Microsoft of Google. What a choice.

      2. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Does old Cory know what he's talking about?

        "As it is, Android is utter shite, but Apple is worse. And there really isn't a third choice."

        Graphene OS. A de-googled phone gets Google out of your hair. It's a matter of what issue is getting up your nose the most. I also think that too many people want their mobe to be as good as or better than a laptop and get mad when it isn't. (A tablet being a giant mobile (phablet)).

        There are alternative choices, but they don't have massive marketing budgets and they often take some skill and fortitude on the user's part to make them go.

      3. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

        Re: Does old Cory know what he's talking about?

        Because gamers buy expensive games for their consoles.

    6. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: Does old Cory know what he's talking about?

      "He's very good at making these wide, sweeping statements, as if they're somehow some kind of philosophical or ecomic laws. But what's he got to back them up?"

      Cory has been an analyst of the tech industry for many years. He's also a very good philosopher and good at seeing things that many people don't. Not only is he good himself, he works with many others who are just as good at sorting out the real reasons vs. the marketing fluff why things are done a certain way and how the tech world shifts and changes.

      If you look up talks he's done, his web posts and other information, it's easy enough to get listings of his references on a subject and the raw data to do your own analysis. You might be at a disadvantage in not having the same access to experts when you need them that he does when you are trying to make sense of why a company or politician/government did something.

  10. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

    Not sure his plans to fix it are realistic

    There is one factor in all this that Doctorow & others seem to be missing - the users.

    It all sounds very like the perennial complaints about junk food: it's unhealthy, makes you fat, messes up our high streets with litter & fast-food shops, etc. The problem is that, even if you opened up a chain of healthy-food shops and subsidised them with taxpayer money so that they were cheap, people would still go to McDonalds. Why? Because they like it.

    We can sit here and complain about Google, Facebook, X and all the rest, and moan that people should realise that they're being manipulated and (ab)used, but as long as people are happy with what they get from those services, they won't change to alternatives. Even the Romans understood that with the classic approach of "bread & circuses" - giving the ordinary people free food & entertainment so that they wouldn't look too hard at the people in charge and what they were doing behind the scenes.

    How do we fix that? Education is the obvious approach, but you can't force people to learn any more than you can ban stupidity.

    1. My other car WAS an IAV Stryker

      Re: Not sure his plans to fix it are realistic

      "The problem is that ...people would still go to McDonalds. Why?" Because they're addicted to it, exactly the way Big Biz has chemically engineered it.

      And the same addiction exists in social media, if not worse since there is no biological "fullness" to urge you to stop consuming (for the moment).

      "How do we fix that?" Education will never fix addiction, and the users will not seek their own path out -- "I can quit whenever I want" being one of the biggest lies ever. Trying to regulate these industries and put limits on the measures their greed will utilize seems like the only option.

    2. Bebu
      Windows

      Re: Not sure his plans to fix it are realistic

      《How do we fix that? Education is the obvious approach, but you can't force people to learn any more than you can ban stupidity.》

      Reminded me of Dorothy Parker's offering when challenged to use horticulture in a sentence. ;)

      Curious why does "enshittification" have a doubled tt? Does it make it rhyme with "it" rather than "height"? viz enshitification ~ enshytification. In any case both quite clearly faecal coinages.

      1. HuBo Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: Not sure his plans to fix it are realistic

        Ah! The Vicious Circle of the Algonquin Round Table (superb quote!) ... and speaking of Rothschild (whence Mouton Cadet), here in France, as we speak, farmers (including those in the viticultural branch of horticulture) are fighting the enshytification of agricultural policy, with literal (non-linguistic manure) enshityfication of government buildings ... poop for poop! (they're also blocking major highways, airports, major grocery chain stores, ...).

        A great time to be alive!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Not sure his plans to fix it are realistic

          they're also blocking major highways, airports, major grocery chain stores, ...

          Which will have great public support, until prices go up, the cupboards are empty and people at large start to starve. Then, suddenly, the paysans will become greedy capitalists that the government should be sorting out.

          1. Someone Else Silver badge

            Re: Not sure his plans to fix it are realistic

            You're Ron DeSantis, and I claim my $5...

        2. tiggity Silver badge

          Re: Not sure his plans to fix it are realistic

          Farmer protests in France: As a UK person, see these reported on so often in the (sadly xenophobic*) UK media that they seem to be a yearly French ritual, rather than an unusual event of note.

          * Rank hypocrisy. e.g. Daily Mail, Owner Lord Rothermere is French for "tax management"** purposes, the mail itself is registered in Bermuda last time I checked (for "tax management" ** reasons),

          ** Use your imagination to guess why such "tax management" is not beneficial to UK tax income.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Not sure his plans to fix it are realistic

            As someone who lived in France for several decades I can assure you that it is an annual ritual, practically a national sport. I'm surprised that "La grève" isn't featuring in this year's Paris Olympics.

            1. HuBo Silver badge
              Thumb Up

              Re: Not sure his plans to fix it are realistic

              Exactement! You've hammer-thrown this nail right on the head!

              Olympics (eg. Paris JO 2024) are all about the most challenging of human travails, inspired by the Labours of Hercules, whose French translation was completed half a century ago in the 1976 documentary "Les Douze Travaux d'Astérix". The eighth task is particularly relevant to French farmers: from the multi-storey bureaucratic madhouse Kafka maze, obtain a signed Form A-38, by requesting a non-existing A-39, for a fantasy B-65.

              This (and related "La grève") would sure make for a most interesting of international competition events in this Summer's upcoming games!

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Not sure his plans to fix it are realistic

        "Dorothy Parker's offering when challenged to use horticulture in a sentence"

        You learn something here every day. That was today's. Thanks.

    3. Gene Cash Silver badge

      Re: Not sure his plans to fix it are realistic

      YES.

      "Netflix password crackdown fuels jump in subscribers" - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66240390

      So instead of people saying "this is ridiculous and expensive and I'm tired of being abused like this" they double down and throw Netflix more money.

      Me, I tossed my TV 15 years ago when an hour of TV was 20 minutes of commercials and maybe 40 minutes at most of content, and everything even remotely interesting got canceled.

      Then there's Amazon putting ads in Prime video. People I talk to shrug their shoulders and don't seem to see a problem with that.

      Me, I tossed my expensive Sirius XM radio 10 years ago when they started putting ads in music I was paying for.

  11. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    So we started out with a few big incumbents. They had controlled innovation to take place where they chose. That left them vulnerable so disruption. The disruptors came along and now they have become incumbents. They are now controlling innovation to take place where they choose. What does history suggest happens next?

  12. karlkarl Silver badge

    Enshittification is a great term.

    For almost any dead tech product, you can go through screenshots of their releases and see the exact stages of enshittification occurring.

  13. Jeff Smith

    Can somebody explain to me…

    Why do these companies need to chase constant growth? Why is it not enough to make a very good thing that lots of people really like, and then keep that thing as good as you can whilst bringing in a steady ten figure annual profit?

    1. Jonathan Richards 1 Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: Can somebody explain to me…

      Probably because the management is beholden to investors in the form of shareholders or institutional lenders who see the ten-figure annual profit, and wish for more. Greed, in a word.

    2. jmch Silver badge

      Re: Can somebody explain to me…

      One answer is the same reason why countries chase constant GDP Growth - it's easy to measure and immediately visible, so increasing it is a quick win, even if increasing company revenue / country GDP is done at the expense of other factors that are less measurable or less immediate.

  14. Jan 0 Silver badge

    Wot no Dabsy?

    Surely Dabsy is the best author for this topic.

    **Bring Back Our Dabsy!**

  15. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Its too late to stop

    it.

    The time to stop it was 20 odd years ago when the chance to split microsoft into 2 (or more) companies was lost.

    Once everyone knew that there was no limit to the size any company would be allowed to take its market share to, then they were all at it... m$ with 95% of operating systems.... google 90% of searching... farcebook ... need I say more.

    And now due to their size in their markets, the barrier to entry for smaller companies is simply huge.

    And as for schemes like share buybacks, they only do that because it makes the execs and share owners richer, and it means less tax to pay on share dividends .. and who cares about the employees fired to reduce costs that those profits spent on buyback could have easily covered.

    PS buybacks should be illegal as they once were, unless 100% of the traded shares are being bought back and the company de-listed from the stock market.

  16. DS999 Silver badge

    Wait he's saying tech LOST?

    Sure instead of a few hundred companies there are a lot fewer due to buyouts like Facebook buying Instagram and Whatsapp or companies like Blackberry folding because they couldn't see beyond their current market to where the future would lead.

    But there are a half dozen tech companies large enough that any one of them has the resources to theoretically buy ALL the media companies in the world. Its pretty clear who won. Napster's failure wasn't because seven media companies speaking with a single voice was louder than a few hundred tech companies all saying different things. Napster failed because what they were doing was against the law - and importantly violations of copyright law are quick and easy to prove in court when compared to antimonopoly law. Particularly in the US, where you have one of the two major parties believing that all regulation is bad, so once they get into power they will not follow through with ongoing cases (like when the Bush administration settled the Microsoft case for a slap on the wrist)

    Though I suppose with that party now taken over by a cult figure, it would happily pursue monopoly cases against any companies that upset Dear Leader.

    The part of the EU government that enforces such things appears to be its own bureaucracy outside of the political control of the various EU nations, so it isn't subject to the whims of an electorate that votes in new leadership because it desires "change", as illusory as that change typically may be. So the EU appears able to succeed where the US can't, but that will only fragment things. US companies may have to toe the line in the EU, but they cannot force them to change their behavior in the rest of the world. The stupid "accept cookies" pop ups those yahoos created for the world notwithstanding.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @DS999 - Re: Wait he's saying tech LOST?

      US companies will not have to toe any line. This godsend war in Ukraine will give the US total domination over EU. All of the economic trade agreements between US and EU will include a small clause somewhere in the basement that will ensure US big tech will be able to do business unhampered. It would not be the first time.

    2. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: Wait he's saying tech LOST?

      "Sure instead of a few hundred companies there are a lot fewer due to buyouts like Facebook buying Instagram and Whatsapp or companies like Blackberry folding because they couldn't see beyond their current market to where the future would lead."

      In some places the number of competitors is down to one with a huge barrier to enter that market. In the US, Live Nation/Ticket Master owns nearly all live music. Since they do, a face value $40 concert ticket can easily cost $80 and if you can't go/change your mind, they've got the laws passed to prevent you from selling that ticket. These days I only go to shows to see my friends when I can get in for free or when acts play small venues that sell their own tickets. I've even driven a couple of hundred miles to do that. It's also great to see bands in smaller venues where you aren't 7 leagues back. A friend just saw G3 (Eric Johnson, Steve Vai and Joe Satriani) mid-week in a smallish club and his mind is still blown. It can pay to live in out of the way places.

  17. martinusher Silver badge

    Why would you expect anything different?

    Our capitalist economic system has certain properties that apply to all businesses regardless of what the business activity is. Obviously when a completely new technology turns up there may be a period of time which is more like a free for all but once 'corporate' takes over then the rules that everyone plays by are exactly the same.

    There is one thing that capitalism has never been able to cope with and that's the limits to growth. Since capital by its nature pays itself forward its always seeking not just to extract a percentage but to constantly increase the yield from a particular investment. This isn't necessarily obvious in established businesses but when you're in a startup where achieving that 30% top line growth year on year is relatively straightforward (because improving sales 30% from nothing is still nothing!) you can only carry this so far before you run out of customers to sell to. This won't matter too much if you're still closely held, you're just continue to make product and money indefinitely, but if you've gone public or been acquired by a public company then you've got a problem. Not only has the acquisition or iPO process revalued the company due to principals and others extracting value from it (effectively paying themselves forward) but now you've got to produce a ROI on that new valuation. If the inevitable happens and the rosy picture of growth painted to investors doesn't happen then it will be a time of economies, M&A and general fiddling around to create the numbers. (It usually fails, BTW.) If you make it past this stage and become established then you're going to have to figure out how to squeeze ongoing revenue out of a static customer base. The upgrade treadmill doesn't always work so the lease model (a model that is as old as computing itself -- Hollerith pioneered it!) to keep those revenues flowing. S paying more for less is just part of the process.

  18. ldo

    Watch Out For Boiled-Frog Customers

    Quite often the users/customers let themselves get trapped into a situation where they complain about how bad the situation has got, yet they seem unwilling or unable to make the switch away from the company that is causing them the aggravation. It’s like being trapped in an abusive relationship, I guess.

    I see a lot of examples right here among Register commenters, especially after I point out ways they can solve some particular problem.

    1. Cliffwilliams44 Silver badge

      Re: Watch Out For Boiled-Frog Customers

      The same situation occurs with governments.

      I grew up across the river from Canada. I have family in Canada. My Grandmother emigrated from Canada in 1910.

      A common theme among Canadians is to bitch about the fact that nearly 50% of their income goes to taxes. If you tell them "You know, if you give up some of this free shit your government gives you, your taxes could be lowered." they respond "Hell no, I like my free shit!" In some ways you can understand this, they are "getting something" out of this abusive relationship!

      What I never understood was Americans in Blue states. My home across the river was NY state. Where everyone bitches about high taxes, bad roads, high crime, jobs leaving, corrupt politicians, and yet, every election, they elect the same people, the same political party into power! Nothing gets better, it just gets worse. Every few years it's rinse and repeat!

      It's no wonder the big tech companies do what they do, they have seen just how effective this is for governments!

      1. ldo

        Re: Americans in Blue states.

        You have this long tradition of fear of Socialism/Communism, don’t you. Right back to “better dead than Red!”.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Globalists

    This is happening because the globalist movement has seized control of our governments, media and institutions. They want a small number of huge companies to help them control us through the world government they are creating. You think it's enshitted now? Just wait if they succeed. Our lives will be that of cattle. It's called collectivism. It goes way beyond stupidity and greed, those are just the tools.

  20. Cliffwilliams44 Silver badge

    Where do I start

    "According to the tale, the journalist was ushered into his hotel suite – strewn with empty champagne bottles after a wild party. A former Miss United Kingdom was freshening up in the shower and George sat in an armchair with a cigar and a huge glass of Scotch in his fist."

    Ahh, the days, when men were men, and the rest of the world were not a bunch of narcissistic, pussified, whining, little snowflakes!

    Now on to the article:

    It's called corporations, and corporation are design to make money, money that pays salaries, salaries that buy other corporation's products and services. Do corporations sometimes do stupid, and possibly evil things in the course of making money, they sure do. Are some corporations so positioned that the customer just can't "take their money elsewhere?" Yup!

    If you think the answer is government, you are hopelessly naive. Government does not do anything well and their efforts to "manage" corporations they do even worse. Examples throughout history are there for all to see. The breakup of Sun Oil made Rockefeller richer and more powerful than he was before the breakup! Laws are passed by politicians who are susceptible to money "donated" to their re-election funds. Therefore, to expect them to "regulate" multi-billion-dollar corporations in any way that effectively prevents them from doing shitty things that make them billions is ludicrous!

    Capitalism turns thing into shit, but people make money, they earn wages, they live their lives and put up with the shit. Socialism with its controlled economy, over-regulations, turns everyone's life into shit, except the small group if Elites who run everything. It is feudalism without the titles and the fancy clothes. Whether you are a proletariat or a surf, your life is pretty much the same!

    1. 43300 Silver badge

      Re: Where do I start

      And every few years, the plebs get to vote in a general election where they can decide whether they want to be governed by the red half of the corporatist uniparty, or the blue half of the corporatist uniparty. Apart from a few cosmetic differences, the resulting policies will be the same whichever option they choose.

      'they', in a first-past-the-post system, actually being a small number of voters in a a few marginal consituencies, of course, most of the time.

      1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

        Re: Where do I start

        Apart from a few cosmetic differences, the resulting policies will be the same whichever option they choose.

        This is why, all across Europe (and beyond) we're seeing big votes for extremist parties. Not, as the press would have us believe, because people are becoming more left- or right-wing, but because we're fed up with the "they're all the same" politics from the main parties, and want to deliver a large boot up their collective arses.

  21. mistersaxon

    The Enshittification of Everything

    Let's not kid ourselves, all this - not just tech, but all of it - is due to the weird shareholder mentality that growth is only ever reflected in an increasing share price, which in turn comes from a desire to own without consequence. If shareholders were forbidden from selling for, say, a year, they would HAVE to focus on getting a company to turn a real profit that could be paid as dividends. Sadly, that just leads to asset stripping or Murders and Acquisitions and nowhere is there any plan to genuinely deliver value to customers in return for their money.

    The System Is Broken and billionaires break it faster and harder than anyone else. Grab your knife and fork folks, it's time to Eat the Rich. Not your well-off neighbour, but the ones with the yachts that cost more than your housing estate, let alone your house. Heck, a cutoff for consumption of a billion and up would be enough to turn this around.

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