I think the actual reality may be that it’s actually, genuinely not profitable enough to serve the poorest of society. (At least in the eyes of the demented greedy fucks running the show)
We’ve seen an explosion of business-to-business sales and more businesses are spending more money on “productivity” software suites and more. Software is indeed eating business and making it more costly while often not actually providing as much real value as they’re selling you. Small businesses are overwhelmed by these costs and often put out of business by them.
Even gas stations all have video ads. The money they’re making off the gas isn’t enough, they need to supplement it with advertising. Advertising is becoming more ubiquitous than I could have even ever imagined, and I thought it was over-the-top and abusively ubiquitous 30 years ago.
Fast food like Dominos has to keep assembly-line, sweatshop like conditions to keep up with internet ordering (with no built-in rate-limiter, an infinite amount of people can order pizza at the same time, they just want you to keep up), and even with those kind of conditions, it’s often just barely scraping by on breaking even on costs. Most restaurants are struggling with this right now, its an industry I expect to see fail almost completely except for rich, fancy restaurants.
It certainly feels like we’re about to see a whole glut of consumers that companies just aren’t even interested in anymore because they’re not interested in people with no money to spend.
I’m not really excited about where this is all headed. Expect more Company Towns on the horizon…
From Heroes back to Zeroes… Fuck this shithole country that doesn’t give a damn about millions of its own citizens.
I’ve been thinking very similarly. They used to overcharge the poor to buy the cheapest version of something (low cost, low value option, or the medium cost, high value option)
Well these days you can just market only to rich people because they live in their own universe, and not even have to worry about poor people sullying your brand with their sticker shocker and the like. Targeted marketing and online sales means a new brand doesn’t have to market to all people in a grocery aisle or whatever. They just make a luxury version of something. That’s it. The economy has focused away from and abandoned the people with money. Ta da.
There’s lots of little signs.
Loss of 24 hour stores. It used to be profitable enough to leave places open all night for people to come in all night. Both Target and Walmart (poor people stores) have pretty much dumped it and don’t even do stocking overnight anymore. This leads to the same stores being a mess and feeling difficult to navigate (especially when its actively being stocked and you’re just trying to get past them), pushing more people to order online and pickup because its easier than trying to find it yourself and in the store the price is often wrong or just not listed.
Suddenly its not profitable to give a shit about things like customer service. It just feels like it portends that a certain number of customers now can be considered “acceptable losses.”
It’s like Gary’s Economics says in The Changing Shape of Great Britain: When the rich own all the wealth, ordinary people can’t work for each other, so they have to work for the rich to make goods that are sold to the rich.
They’re squeezing every dollar out of everyone who isn’t rich. Pricing schemes, greedflation, unnecessary required subscriptions, rent, utilities. There’s nothing left to spend because the rich have it all. So of course they’re spending.
