No longer science fiction.
The same reason why the childhood treats like Hostess Twinkies and cakes and candy bars don’t taste good anymore. I originally blamed my tastebuds for the change, but now I believe it’s the enshittification of base ingredients, squeezing as much nostalgic goodwill and basic cravings for sugar/fat as possible out of ever-lower quality, cheaper basic materials in the name of profit margins, donations to conservative super PACs, and executive yachts.
I was just reading an article about how candy companies are trying to make GLP-1 (Ozempic) resistant candy that is effectively hyper-addicting and restarts the cycle of addiction.
Incredible how bad capitalism is for society and it’s affect on food processes in order to drive needless profits.
That should be illegal, wtf. Actually evil shit. No wonder people love Superhero movies when real life is filled with supervillains with no end in sight.
Lex Luthor is downright benevolent compared to what we have in the real world
Oh definitely. Have you read In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts? I’m halfway thru it now and it’s been incredibly eye-opening.
I will now; thankfully friend Anna has it in her archive.
Ah, Coffiest is finally here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants
“In a vastly overpopulated world, businesses have taken the place of governments and now hold political power. States exist merely to ensure the survival of huge trans-national corporations. Advertising has become hugely aggressive and by far the best-paid profession. Through advertising, the public is constantly deluded into thinking that the quality of life is improved by all the products placed on the market. Some of the products contain addictive substances designed to make consumers dependent on them. However, the most basic elements of life are incredibly scarce, including water and fuel.” This in 1952. Mad Men indeed.
I’m just sitting here laughing by myself in my miserable densified cardboard shack I live in.
A quote from the book:
“each sample of Coffiest contains three milligrams of a simple alkaloid. Nothing harmful. But definitely habit-forming. After ten weeks the customer is hooked for life. It would cost him at least five thousand dollars for a cure, so it’s simpler for him to go right on drinking Coffiest - three cups with every meal and a pot beside the bed at night, just as it says on the jar.”
Advertising has become hugely aggressive and by far the best-paid profession.
Didn’t see generative AI slop coming I guess. Money in advertising has been shrinking, at least for small and medium firms.
Ah, finally a reason to upgrade from Windows 7: to make sure the slop really gets into every nanosecond of human existence.
finally, candy companies fighting drug companies
Holy shit, what? You got an article on that?
Everything. Even pet food, I can see the changes, the canned paté my cat enjoyed used to be like a terrine in the can, now it’s a loose watery mess.
I mean, that’s part of it yes…
…but also overall food has gotten better, more diverse, with better flavorings, especially if you make it yourself.
So on one hand, a modern Twinkie isn’t as good, but on the other hand, there’s far more tasty options than just a Twinkie now. Hell, even those similarly styled and packaged Mexican treats (like a Bimbo Nito for example) appeal to me more than Hostess treats of any kind.
But I’d still rather go for something locally made that isn’t packaged and filled with preservatives. I am lucky to have some nice Mexican bakeries nearby.
Back in the late 20th century, Alton Brown mentioned how it might be hard to find things like soy sauce or ginger at grocery stores.
Tastykake’s Butterscotch Krimpets changed overnight when they got bought. They’re mealy and don’t have enough butterscotch flavor.
I am sure that most of the cereals I’ve tried in recent years have changed since I was a child. Not for the better.
I blame Paz and his burgers.
It’s because the hot idea in business right now is rental models for everything.
If your business plan doesn’t have a way to lock customers in and force them to keep paying forever, then no investor is going to look at it.
Software is subscription, infrastructure is subscription. Hell, your own data is probably subscription based these days. Buy a car? Bet your ass it has at least 1 subscription service in it.
One of the driving forces behind this phenomena is that business types value having that reoccurring revenue on the books more than “normal” revenue. If you have two companies with identical revenue but one of them gets it from customers locked in on a subscription, that company will be valued significantly higher. If you’re an exec or a big investor who owns a lot of stock in a company then you’re effectively incentivized to push the company towards that subscription based reoccurring revenue model because it will boost the stock price and make you richer.
I was talking about this with my friend the other day. I was looking for car insurance right. I went to Geico and I was just about ready to lock in to a plan for 1000$. I had a question I needed answered so I went to support. What I got was a worthless chatbot that ended up costing Geico my business. I was so displeased I ended up going to progressive.
But that begs the question: do Geico executives make more money off the increased stock valuation that comes from implementing a chatbot despite losing my real, cash business?
Apparently that book is from 1978. Exercise for the reader: find the similarities between 1978 and now…
going by the cover from top to bottom: spaceX, tesla, DOGE. hmm…
Actually it’s your own fault for buying Superproductname. You should have bought Supererproductname. You’d have known this is you’d put in two hours of research only to find out that Supererproductname was discontinued in 1919.
“You complain about the price of groceries yet you continue to buy them. How interesting 🙏🏼”
Because they are all businessmen. We have made a system where there are no more craftsmen. The car companies are more financial institutions that want their monthly fee, just like your doctor wants it, your washing machine manufacturer wants it.
An ice cream maker (I got at Sam’s club) had plastic gears. Thing sucked. The gears would break every third batch of ice cream (I make thick custardy ice cream). My grandmother gave me the best gift, which was her ice cream maker from the 70s. Metal gears. Now I’ll blow through motors instead of gears hooray.
Its almost like low taxes and loose monetary policy leads to share buybacks and shittier products as the CPI reports rapid deflation and more share buybacks with debt accrual.
Real question here: is it possible to walk all this back from the edge with more ethical companies? I’m thinking co-ops, Mondragon corps, union shops, etc. Basically build businesses that have motivations other than deepening the pockets of VC’s and the like, yet have some kind of growth trajectory (or federate with other corps) to gradually subsume the market.
I get that massive funding makes certain things possible, like disrupting the market, or aggressively buying your competitors. And yes, the company charter would have to be bulletproof against hostile takeover, buyouts, and enshitification, in order to go the distance. But is that really all it takes, or am I missing something huge here?
