How we’ve enshittified the tech economy

prospectmagazine.co.uk

36 points·jrepinc··7 comments

To what degree is this a "tech economy" problem vs a "business" problem? Perhaps the businesses use tech, but then most do. A cable internet/TV company like Comcast is more purely tech. They were enshittifying long ago, which maybe proves the thesis. But I have a feeling it's not strongly driven or related to tech.

I believe the people who coined the term enshittification have repeatedly said it is a 'capitalism' problem.

To put a finer point on it, this is the logical conclusion of running the profit maximization algorithm. Corners will be cut and prices will be raised.

It’s a business problem inspired by the last generation of tech companies

The article is "kind" of about the enshittified tech economy. It uses Amazon and Uber mostly as well known examples of bad behavior (like name dropping a celebrity everybody knows is a train wreck).

The article is mostly about attempts to create an alternative using cooperative structures that aim for 50+% money going to drivers / gig-workers / ect...

Example 1: $30/hr for 9,000 drivers in New York, NY that's "almost" break even (according to the article) that focuses on limited, yet high demand services. This service attempts 80% drivers / 20% cooperative allocation.

Example 2: Restaurant cooperative in Fort Collins, CO that got pissed at Grubhub jacking rates, so they built their own delivery service and charge $4.90 / order average. Now have 50% of the city's business.

Everything has been “enshittified”. It’s now more surprising when something’s not bad.

It's everywhere now.

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