What Moneyball-for-Everything Has Done to American Culture
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
If you're looking for someone to curse for managers always wanting a unit of measurement or a KPI, or race-to-the-bottom tactics like what we're seeing everywhere, you're looking for Fredrick Taylor.
It's morphed since then, but he's worth knowing about so you know the deeper problem.
I think of the airlines, after 9/11 and the pandemic and how they made everything an extra-cost option. Luggage. food. snacks. every form of waiting in line (at the gate, getting to your seat, the security line, etc) seats you fit in.
Now good service has been replaced with mediocre service, and you buy back convenience (or even common decency) bit by bit.
Flying is less comfortable for most of us now, sure. But it's also much cheaper than it was, and therefore more accessible. (Which itself gives rise to an issue of negative externalities, but that's a separate issue, kind of.)
HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27483207