Doctrow argues that nascent tech unionization (which we’re closer to having now than ever before) combined with bipartisan fear (and consequent regulation) either directly or via agencies like the FTC and FCC can help to curb Big Tech’s power, and the enshittification that it has wrought.
It’ll always fight to go there, because least offered most gained is the name of the business.
Sure you can split them up and regulate them, that’ll last for a few years or decades but money is power and they will wield that power to undo it all again, time after time to seek profit.
The only solution is a system that doesn’t value capital.
It can do more than that. Unions aren’t solely about pay increases, they can enact all kinds of change in the unionized company. If the members of the union don’t like that Google is now shifting gears to making killbot drones (this is not something I just made up), a union could demand they stop doing that, and if the demand is loud enough, the company has to listen or go out of business.
I know this is naive, but sometimes I wish we’d be bolder in brainstorming alternative ways the economy could work.
Imagine, for example, the IRS would send a yearly, mandatory “happiness questionnaire” to all employees of a company (compare the “world happiness report”). This questionnaire then would have a major influence on how much taxes the company has to pay, so much that it’s cheaper to make employees happy and content than to squeeze them for every ounce of labor they can give.
Or an official switch to 6 hour days, except to get those 2 hours less, you have to use them for growing your own food. Shorter workdays, more time with family, more self-reliance. And a strong motivation for cities to provide more green spaces and community gardens.
Very naive ideas with lots of problems, yes, but I wish we wouldn’t have the concept of revenue generation so thoroughly encrusted in our heads as the guiding principle of all we do and dream of.
Economics is called the dismal science for a reason. Most policies don’t that the effects you think it would have.
With the happiness questionnaire, how is the overall happiness of the employees of the companies calculated, just a straight up average? So if the company made sure the really shitty stuff was compartmentalized to a very small portion of the employees, then they would be rewarded? If it’s determined by the least happy employees, a company could fire the least happy employees and be rewarded.
Growing your own food only really works for people that aren’t living in high density housing. So that policy would encourage people to move to low density housing which would have a negative environmental impact.
A lot of times these kinds of far out economic ideas simply won’t have the intended impact (dismal science, sorry!) and really only distract from needed economic policies that are known to work but aren’t being implemented. Universal Basic Income is often promoted, but would actually mean companies like Walmart don’t have to pay their employees more. This distracts from a push to increase minimum wage which companies like Walmart do not want. And of course a lot of problems would be solved by simply raising taxes on the wealthy.
Should we really be exploring experimental economic policies when we can’t even implement the economic policies that have been proven to work?
How about we focus on tax the rich, raise minimum wage. Once those are implemented then we can brainstorm other ideas.
So that policy would encourage people to move to low density housing
Haven’t seen such BS. Similar event happened in my country when 12 hours work day was 1917ed to 8 hours with help of French technology called “La Révolution”. The rest is history.
Don’t see many gardens on that apartment building. So if people want to get that hours off per day for gardening, they’ll have to move out of the apartment building, won’t they?
It’s just an example for a wild idea that might inspire people. But… Wikipedia “Community Gardening”
It’s a pretty popular concept in the UK. Takes less space than parks, is a great place to meet like-minded people, reduce food costs and the community aspect means you can even go on vacation since its a group of people caring for the plants.
Agreed, companies will try to game any such regulations (just like tax laws, labor laws and such, those just had a lot of time to mature). The “free-time-for-gardening” program, too, would make city dwellers without access to community gardens balk and maybe fake gardens with rubber plants would become a thing to claim that gardening time without gardening :)
Regarding UBI, the counter argument is that if companies like Walmart paid scraps for hard work, it would allow people to simply leave. Same for cleaning sewers or emptying trash bins. It could be an instrument that adjusts economic rewards away from “how much revenue does the worker generate” towards “how bearable is the work.”
Should we really be exploring experimental economic policies when we can’t even implement the economic policies that have been proven to work?
How about we focus on tax the rich, raise minimum wage. Once those are implemented then we can brainstorm other ideas.
I believe we should do both. This “waiting for the right moment” or “focus on one thing only” can be a fallacy, imho, that leads to well polished counters from reactionaries and less motivation in supporters.
I think having more space hippie ideas will inspire many more people than boring minimum wage or tax increase fights, so it may well recruit more people and thus bring more pressure towards better labor.
I also think it would help overwhelm counter-messaging. Imagine think tanks would have to counter a hundred wild ideas rather and being able to fine tune messaging against the small number of what we have now.
Symbiosis: if everyone has two or three inspiring wild ideas floating in their heads, it shifts views in general. And beliefs that support a sexy solar punk utopia will also be applicable to boring labor reform ideas.
With the whole climate situation and resource scarcity (like oil and rare earths), de-growth is coming eventually. For the current system, that would likely mean an endless great depression. Brainstorming crazy ideas for a less consumerist type of economy may well be a boon.
Regarding UBI, the counter argument is that if companies like Walmart paid scraps for hard work, it would allow people to simply leave.
Leave for what? another minimum wage job? UBI is just a subsidy for corporations. Businessmen like Andrew Yang promoted it to confuse the discussion around increasing minimum wage. And it worked… minimum wage was not increased.
I believe we should do both. This “waiting for the right moment” or “focus on one thing only” can be a fallacy, imho, that leads to well polished counters from reactionaries and less motivation in supporters.
There is such a thing as political capital. Bernie Sanders has the right idea, keep talking about the 1%, keep talking about raising taxes on the wealthy, keep talking about raising minimum wage to build support for these policies.
I think having more space hippie ideas will inspire many more people than boring minimum wage or tax increase fights
It will inspire more opposition. “See this is what those hippies want, are you going to vote for that?”
Having people divided on various single issue groups that want different policies means no on gets anything. Taxing the rich and raising minimum wage is boring because it works. Experiments are fun because you don’t know whether it will work or not. But when an economic policy doesn’t work, it negatively impacts people’s lives.
It’s feasible to get people to agree on taxing the rich. It’s feasible to get people to agree to increase minimum wage. But if we’re busy debating planting gardens or whatever, we aren’t going to debating the things that we can win on.
Leave for nothing if UBI is high enough. Otherwise, couch-surf. Temporarily move to a shared house. Or just have a few months extra to hunt for a job without getting evicted.
I think we just have to disagree on whether a vast cloud of progressive ideas or total focus on one or two realistic ideas is better.
My belief is that it helps. That opposition is good. Let them waste all their ammo, let them help spread the message, let them get the impression that there are so many progressive demands that it shifts the general tone. Some ideas or aspects of ideas will stick, even with the opposition.
And while they’re fighting hippie space pirates, we’ll pass an automatic minimum wage adjustment. Progressives have been on the defense far too long. I want a new 1968 :)
The problem with UBI is it isn’t going to address a lot problems around people being unable to work because of physical or mental health issues. You need a welfare system to addresses those issues.
So with higher minimum wage, an unemployment insurance program, and a welfare system, what’s the point of UBI? It doesn’t fulfill the needs that existing systems do when properly funded and updated for inflation. It’s really just a subsidy to companies that don’t want to pay their employees well. This is why guys like Andrew Yang want it. And there’s a lot of people out there that want it because who doesn’t want to get a monthly check from the government? And people are generally attracted to these “one weird trick to fix the economy, economists hate him!” kind of policies.
But the reality is that economics isn’t simple, there are no quick fixes. There are people with different needs so there needs to be different programs to fulfill those needs. Someone with a health condition isn’t going to survive off of a small amount of money and couch surfing. Someone who has a well paying job and lives in a place that has high rent or mortgage payments then suddenly finds themself unemployed isn’t going to be able to pay their bills with UBI.
So UBI is just an excuse to scrap necessary welfare programs, and not raise minimum wage. Couch surfing isn’t a solution to housing problems. There’s only so many couches and eventually you end up with homelessness.
With the happiness questionnaire, how is the overall happiness of the employees of the companies calculated, just a straight up average? So if the company made sure the really shitty stuff was compartmentalized to a very small portion of the employees, then they would be rewarded? If it’s determined by the least happy employees, a company could fire the least happy employees and be rewarded.
Send the questionaire to anyone who gets a w2 from that company. Set multiple factors to determine over all taxes paid. A good average could reduce your taxes by x%, but too many very unhappy outliers could raise it back up by even more.
Meanwhile streaming services are jacking up their prices, having locked in their viewers.
That’s the one thing I don’t agree with. No one is locked into streaming services. Charging the prices people are willing to pay is not enshittification. Encshittfication will be when they buy all the cable TV, shut it down, start producing only reality shows and show ads every 5 minutes. So far they charge more but Netflix is still making Oscar winning movies.
No, I agree with the definition. What I’m saying is that quality of streaming services is not degrading. The price is going up but that’s not the same thing.
And I already said that you have many alternatives: there’s multiple competing services (who’s competing with YT?), you still can buy disks, you can watch TV, you can go to the cinema, damn, you can even read a book. No one is locked into one source of entertainment.
Eh, people have their own tastes in TV. Streaming companies buy exclusive rights to certain content and if that’s where your tastes lie, you’re pretty SOL. It’s about as close to “lock-in” as you can get.
Your definition of enshittificantion is also far too strict. It’s just the shift that companies inevitably make from trying to attract new users quickly by providing a great service, to trying to extract maximum profit by degrading the service quality and cramming in as much revenue generation as they can.
Streaming companies buy exclusive rights to certain content and if that’s where your tastes like, you’re pretty SOL. It’s about as close to “lock-in” as you can get.
Everything about it is wrong. They don’t have only certain content, they have everything from Oscar winning movies and indie shows to shit reality shows. They don’t only buy rights, they also produce a lot of content. Liking their content is not ‘lock-in’, you can cancel any day you like and get entertainment on may different platform (including cable TV) or just buy DVDs or whatever. The service is also not degrading in any way. The price goes up, that’s the only problem people have with it. The still make Oscar nominated movies, even this year and they still make popular shows.
Youtube is the exact opposite: there’s nowhere else to go for this type of content, they are pushing more and more ads on everyone and the recommendation algorithm gets more problematic all the time. That’s enshitification. Netflix doesn’t have any of those issues.
DVDs (how many people even still own a player?) are not a real alternative to streaming for a number of reasons. Nor is “just watch something else on another platform.” Or, at least, if your claim is that entertainment is interchangeable then you’ve got no real complaint about YouTube. Hell, YouTube has its own ad-free subscription. By your own logic, the ads can’t be enshittificantion because you can just pay more to avoid it!
The enshittification of Netflix goes beyond just charging more. It’s any decision the company makes to make the user experience worse so they can make more money. That’s things like hiding your list and your recently watched shows so they can make you scroll through more recommendations. So then they can autoplay the content they stuck in your way. Recommendations that, like YouTube, are more concerned with what they want to monetize than what you actually want. And it’s restricting the way you used to be able to use the service, like on multiple TVs even within the same house, to get you to wade through a bunch of payment plans.
But my point still stands. Enshittification doesn’t require them to become a monopoly and start producing nothing but reality TV. It just describes the strategy shift that these companies inevitably make from making the platform better to attract more users, to making it worse to extract more money from the user base they’ve built up.
Yes, I totally agree with everything you said. YT is enshittifying not because it has ads but because their recommendation algo got really really bad in recent years.
Netflix algo didn’t change. You still have ‘continue watching’ and ‘my list’ on the main page, they added ‘top 10 in your country’ which is nothing like pushing content they want to show you (assuming it’s accurate but I haven’t seen any indications it’s not), the search still returns accurate results, the recommendations are still 100% related to what I’m watching. Netflix never pushed any ‘click-bait’ content at me the way YT does all the time.
If you have different experience with Netflix and you found some changes that make your experience worse than you’re right, it’s enshittyfying. I haven’t seen anything like that and I haven’t seen anyone complaining about anything other than the price.
“You gotta go and join the union” but seriously tech workers hold a lot of leverage for now, it’s why we can command pretty decent wages individually, but collectively with threats to start serious competition there is a lot more there there than hoping for the federal government to step up for the task.
No disagree on moving away from big tech though. You know open source, self host, support community and nonprofit orgs, etc.
Certainly lowers it. I really mean the “for now” piece, between the age of easy money ending, and and AI/ML acting as capital that can be corp owned to affect white collar output it seems as though tech companies are preparing for a squeeze on employees that are unprepared.
Thank you for explaining further, “for now” makes a lot of sense. I personally think myself and my fellow tech workers are going to be screwed, AI will Git Gud before Tech Gets Organized.
How about making bootstrapping businesses easier and providing preferable tax strategies floor small businesses? That would show down venture capital backed companies demanding a public offering and short term profit motives over sustainable businesses.
Or opening up platforms to drive increased competition?
Or providing sponsorship for open standards so users get more choice in the market instead of relying on entrenched large companies?
We need to get rid of the notion that corporations first have a responsibility to the shareholders. The shareholders should be last, after the employees, the customers, and the safety of the general public.
That is indeed was how capitalism worked before Jack Welch changed business culture to be all about shareholder value. Before him companies focused on employees. They bragged about how many employees they had. They bragged about not laying off any employees in the Great Depression.
And the biggest economic problem we have is too much investment. Companies are now competing to get investment dollars instead of competing to make good products to make revenue. Too many resources are devoted to marketing and hoarding data because being a data-driven company will attract more investment from billionaires that are hoarding wealth. Productivity numbers have been rising as it always has since the industrial revolution. But productivity is being devoted towards activities which only serve to attract investment but doesn’t provide any real world value. Because of this, quality life has been decreasing even while productivity is increasing.
The rich have too much money and it’s hurting capitalism.
The employees invest their time and time is money. The customers invest their money and their trust. The general public invests their tax dollars to create the infrastructure needed for the company to even exist in the first place.
And don’t tell me the employees get compensated for their time, because they create more value than they receive, hence, profits.
The shareholders, literally only invest money. They give the least and get the most.
Communism is not “caring about workers”. If you read what Lenin thought of NEP, he agreed that it was in fact better for workers, but ideological impurity of that system was more important, and the reason it was kept for a while was that without some economy there’d simply be no new state after the civil war. While for Trotsky even that wasn’t a good reason.
I was making a joke about right-wingers calling every slightly social, pro-labor, feminist, or anti-racist policy (basically anything that isn’t taxes for the rich) “communist”.
The employees invest their time and time is money. The customers invest their money and their trust. The general public invests their tax dollars to create the infrastructure needed for the company to even exist in the first place.
Yes but it is nothing comparable to millions or billions of € invested by shareholder. Sure customer invest their trust and money but they get benefit immediately, aka the product. General public invest their tax for the infrastructure however companies get taxed too for the infrastructure that benefits general public, that’s a null equation. Investor are a necessary part of the economy and shall be treated as such, nothing prevent government from taxing more benefits from investment tho.
I didn’t say they weren’t important or necessary. I said they were the least important, and I stand by that. Name one single company that doesn’t have employees or customers, or exists outside of a government. I can name several companies without outside investors.
It’s an antibuzzword. It’s describing the culmination of all the buzzwords that get corrupted by marketing people and destroyed by bean counters. In order to destroy something you must be able to name it. He has revealed the name, now we can take action.
That’s cool and all, and maybe it will eliminate some of the worst bullshit, but it’s not going to stop enshitification. Certainly not with big tech because it’s driven by the profit motive in satisfying initial investors, going public, and then engaging in the quest to make the line always go up forever.
The only thing that’s going to stop enshitification is to stop depending on that model for the platforms we want.
Somewhat, my comment got truncated by real life interruption, sorry. But I think we need things that are more community driven than they are profit driven. Things like the Fediverse where the goal isn’t doing all these things to make bank but doing all these things because it’s something people want and how people want to engage with each other.
Doctorow wants regulations to help stave off “loss leading” style behavior and then hopes unions will also somehow help. I’m thinking ultimately that any platform run as a capitalist enterprise is eventually going to enshitify.
I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more of a push for B Corp style corporate governance in tech considering how many tech leaders claim to be working for the greater good. There are plenty of options for doing well and doing good at the same time.
I think there ARE other ways to combat this, and the main one is ending activist investors that empower the Jack Welch pump and dump doctrine.
If someone wants to invest in something because they like it, they should be able to do that. What they should NOT be able to do is overwhelm a company they may or may not even like with dollars and then tell the company how to run its own business. If you don't like what a company is doing, you SELL YOUR STOCK.
It's this incessant worshiping of the shareholder that is step # 1 of enshittifcation.
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