When Keyana Sapp, 31, went shopping for a new backpack, the brands he remembered as a kid were just not the same.
He researched the companies, from North Face to JanSport and Eastpak, and soon realized they were all owned by the VF Corporation after a wave of acquisitions in the 2000s. After a Reddit post he made about his discovery picked up traction, he started looking at other types of consumer goods – cookware, shoes, tools, clothing.
“It seems like that was a story that just repeated in every industry,” Sapp told the Guardian.
There’s that old theory by Sam Vimes about how expensive poverty is, told through the example of two pairs of boots. Once we can’t afford anything that lasts, we will be stuck only with things that don’t and the trap door of economic poverty shuts.
Business, particularly capitalist run businesses, will reduce costs internally once market share stabilizes and expansion is not cost effective. Part of those internal ‘efficiencies’ is lowering the quality of the product or service to its minimum sellable quality (aka enshitification). When they have an effective monopoly, there is no choice but to spend too much for too little and all our money goes to the very basics of survival, without regard to quality of life, and only for the duration of our utility to the economy, ie our most productive years.
We are being bled, pressed, tricked and shamed into complete dependency, aka slavery, by people who have zero empathy and care only for their own interests. It is a war being waged against us, made possible because we’re constantly distracted from seeing it for what it is.
It’s not just physical manufacturing quality. I feel like nothing is ever made or designed correctly anymore. I have no idea where Designers are being employed, because every website and product is made wrong. Nothing is ever easy to use, or explained well. Nothing ever uses words. Like Reel Big Fish said, Everything Sucks.
I wish I had more upvotes to give, you get one alone for the Reel Big Fish reference. But I wholeheartedly agree with the rest of your comment. Enshittification has taken over the whole world, everything is made to be replaced, nothing is made to be repaired anymore. Interfaces are about capturing as much of your time as possible and collecting as much data as possible. You can’t own software anymore, just subscribe.
I can’t believe people are accepting all this. I’m a greybeard engineer/architect so I keep replacing services with my own, and we’re here on the fediverse to push back, but we’re in the minority. Something’s gonna break soon…
Speaking of RBF, I did just buy a nicely made new record player, and I think we’re in a high point for good new music. So there’s that.
Feels really nice to know I’m not just losing my goddamn mind, though. That’s encouraging.
Smarter every day did a video on this topic recently. As I watched this video I felt like I saw the moment Destin started to become a socialist.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vS6HEes8daw&pp=iggUQAFKEGpXMkZUWTlLQkxpcFZaSUM%3D
Is there a list of what PE owns?
It’s always good to get better quality for $5 by time traveling to a thrift store.
I try to buy second hand (not food, obvs). Better quality for lower prices. I have a fully cotton canvas and leather Fjällräven rucksack that only cost me 40 Euro. A new plastic one (without a removable seat pad) would cost 100 more.
