Was just trying to explain to someone why everything is going to shit, specifically companies, and realized, I don’t fully get it either.
I’ve got the following explanation. The sentences marked with “???” are were I’m lost. Anyone mind telling me, if they’re correct and if so, why?
The past few years, central banks were giving out interest rates of 0% or even negative percentages. Regular banks would not quite pass this on, but you could still loan money and give it back later with no real interest payments.
This lead to lots of people investing in companies. As long as those companies paid out more money than those low interest rates, it was worthwhile. But at the same time, this meant companies didn’t have to be profitable, because they could pay out investors from money that other investors gave them???
This has stopped being the case, as central banks are hiking interest rates again, to combat inflation???
Everything isn’t going to shit. The sky is still blue, food is growing, people have good lives.
The current economic issues are cyclical in nature, due to our form of global capitalism, we have 7-10 year up swings and down swings.
I don’t think this is really true, and maybe it’s even a little naive.
For example, 50 years ago earning a “living wage” was much more achievable.
Also, issues we’re presently facing like war related sanctions, china’s instability, and climate change have never occurred before, so how can they be cyclical?
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, I was going to say the same thing. “Everything” is quite the exaggeration, most people are just fine without junk tech companies. Things are more expensive and they’ll probably keep getting more expensive because they’ve been out of balance for decades. Food, gas etc. should be more expensive, we’ve just been blessed with cheap labor and subsidies. Climate issues aside we’re all going to be just fine
Different entities rely on each other too much, so when a number of them have gone down, it began to drag the rest down, like a human tower that could no longer hold itself up. It doesn’t help people think nothing needs to change about their economy, like maybe add a few rules on how it works, no reform needed. But no, apparently it’s perfect.
lemme tell you about a special gorilla from Cincinnati
Cory Doctorow (pluralistic.net) has a number of stories now on the concept of “enshittification”. Basically businesses start off being good to customers but eventually get to a point where, if they’re dominant the drive for endless profit results in them turning to squeezing suppliers, customers, everyone.
Tech enables new forms of exploitation.
There’s got to be a more scholarly name for that trend which has existed long before the invention of the word “enshitification”. What is it?
What do you mean by “everything?”
I guess, most specifically the offerings from mega-corporations. I was quoting a hyperbole there, I did not mean to actually talk about everything.
