How the Friedman Doctrine Leads to the Enshittification of All Things

There are other dynamics in place.

You would think a site like Craigslist would be in a good position to make improvements, launch new services, stay on top, etc.

If you try it though you run into many problems. For one thing, Google has a large bag of tricks aimed at gaslighting webmasters, they even have patents on the subject.

In paid web marketing the paradigm is that you make small changes, measure the results, make more changes, and improve your results over time.

Google makes random things happen when you change your web site, however, to prevent you from improving your SEO by making gradual changes. One result of this is that anybody who has a site that ranks well is terrified of changing anything which is one reason why popular sites often look and work exactly the same way they did 10 years ago. If a site like Ebay or Reddit changed their template or URL layout their rankings might get destroyed and never recover.

Another is that a site has a user base that is interested in playing the game of the current site. If you give those people a new game to play they will probably be indifferent. This not only affects niche sites but it affects big sites like Facebook. Really the hierarchy of attempted growth in ascending risk is

1. Acquire a successful site (e.g. WhatsApp)

2. Develop a new site (You have to fight an uphill battle w/o a two-sided market)

3. Make major changes to an existing site (... but millions of users aren't helpful if they aren't interested in the new thing and the new thing might accelerate the decline of the existing site.)

This is not only why sites stagnate but why companies like Match.com will systematically buy up all the sites in a sector.

The blog-post argues against Wall Street analysts' behavior, but misapplies "Friedman Doctrine" as a label for it. Friedman didn't specify a time-frame because it's the life-time of the corporation. He mentions "long run interest" and alludes to future shareholders:

> And, whether he wants to or not, can he get away with spending his stockholders, customers’ or employes’ money? Will not the stockholders fire him? (Either the present ones or those who take over when his actions in the name of social responsibility have reduced the corporation's profits and the price of its stock.)

FWIW, I think the actual essay could appeal to folks who are skeptical of big-company CEOs because it (a) suggests that governments should stop incentivizing them to influence society and (b) implies that governments should tax directly to fund these social aims rather than asking CEOs to spend company money on them.

The Friedman Doctrine has come up (indirectly) again and again in discussions of Google's activist investors insisting the company should fire a lot more people. A recent one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34519251

It's not just short-term product thinking that our current investor-owned capitalism corrupts: it's short-term blinders that shape who we hire, who we fire, what benefits we give each other.

I want so much to believe in companies that compete to be the best places to work, to encourage the best, to motivate them, & give them the best runways to develop long, medium, & short term ideas & initiatives. Having servant leadership, gardening leadership, that can enable others pursuit of the best things, that supports creating not just capturing value... it's what these very large organizations, stacked with wealth would best be tasked with. Instead, some old legal precedent blocks the pursuit of good.