The Enshitification of Everything

Speaker: [: 00:00:00

All sorts of features that are user centric. Then once the user base is locked down, usually through a combination of must have features or capabilities, and through the acquisition of competitors, it shifts to stage two where businesses are locked in. It becomes the tool that's absolutely necessary for businesses to function well, and

ur business base, and that's [: 00:01:00

Less and less attention paid to the businesses that are on there, and everything is about extracting as much value as possible from. The total user base on the platform. Now I'm way oversimplifying what happens, but after those three stages are reached, what happens is that eventually the platform dies.

You can take that model and I would make the case that you can apply it to all sorts of businesses out in the broader economy.

Prior to the pandemic and through the pandemic, you saw businesses respond by manipulating their prices.

And there were actually several studies that were put out that showed that during the pandemic era, a big segment of the price increases was just price gouging by various businesses. And you saw that trend continue.

s, Amazon Best Buy, you name [: 00:02:00

There is no better illustration of the broader business community entering stage three of the in acidification cycle than what you see here when major retailers and companies are trying new and creative ways to build their customer base out of money for doing the bare minimum.

This is a great example, the idea that these retailers thought it's a good idea to charge for returns. And the processing fees just blows my mind. It's just another example of how companies all across the US have lost a plot and have completely forgotten why they exist in the first place. The only reason they exist is because of the customer and these anti-consumer, anti customer practices is gonna continue to bite them in the rears