siavosh

To everything you can find exceptions, no one's arguing what you're claiming. And you have to read between the lines here, a board doesn't have to remove a CEO for a decision, what I'm trying to point out is the CEO knows their job, and the board knows their job. Just like there's things you know if you do you won't get a good pay raise or bonus (or gasp, get fired), the CEO knows how to avoid that in the long term. The board also knows what they must do over the long term to keep their nice board seat. No one has to get sued to get the message.

I’m not sure we’re actually disagreeing. Boards are expected to maximize long-term shareholder value, not mechanically maximize short-term revenue at every opportunity. Sometimes that means pushing harder on extraction; other times it means holding back because of regulatory risk, developer backlash, or brand damage.

The claim isn’t that Apple must raise fees to 35% or be sued—clearly that’s not how fiduciary duty works. The claim is that, over time, dominant platforms tend to increase extraction once they’ve locked in users and developers. That pattern has been observed repeatedly, and it’s what people are pointing to when they talk about “enshittification.” Individual fee levels can vary, but the long-term direction for monopoly or duopoly platforms is fairly consistent.

They could do a lot of things.

And the board would replace them. It’s their fiduciary duty.

This is the machine. The behavior is much larger than any CEO or even trillion dollar company.

I’ve heard it said that monopolies aren’t a flaw of the system—they’re its product. What else could perpetual, cutthroat competition lead to? This isn’t an unintended consequence. In every new era, even when an industry is disrupted or reinvented, a small number of dominant companies work aggressively to prevent real upheaval—by acquiring smaller competitors, engaging in regulatory capture, and shaping the rules in their favor. Historically, governments have often served the interests of their corporate patrons. The system itself is built for maximal extraction, and there is no “invisible hand” waiting in the wings to protect consumers. There are no evil and good CEOs, just cogs in this machine doing what they're incentivized to do, accumulate.

At the societal level this trend has been happening for decades, and not just in the west. It’s a global trend correlated with the degree of integration into the “global machine.” This machine commodifies and extracts. It extracts more money if you’re lonely. If you’re isolated. If community is replaced with cold market exchange. If all your needs and wants are solved with a purchase or a monetized distraction.

Yet even when the system makes it hard to imagine anything else, we’re never too far from our true nature. We need only take a step towards a neighbor and carve a space, no matter how small, separate from the machine. That’s the only way out.

I feel like there's something in the zeitgeist happening. I've only become aware recently of the 'gift economy' but I'm seeing more and more people post things related.

Productivity will go up, competition will go up, profits will go down, unemployment will go up, wages will go down, a crisis will occur, consolidations and monopolies will emerge, hyper inequality will then break a system incapable of compromise. But sure, there will be a lot of washing machines.

I agree. The center of capitalism may have shifted to China, but they'll have to deal with (are already) dealing with the same problems and it'll probably happen even faster for them. Instability in the system is only overshadowed by the growing instability in peoples lives. I think most people feel this and the discourse has fundamentally shifted in the west, but these are tectonic and unpredictable forces.

A parting thought: from a geo-political perspective, I understand the purpose of essays like this but like I said I think its losing the forrest for the trees and at great risk.

I read the whole post. Really revealing - so much analysis but not a single mention of a global system that is reaching a singularity in wealth concentration, and maybe how that might be an important dimension to reflect on. Its like using so many words to deeply analyze the speed differentials in a car race, but not looking up to see that all the drivers are racing towards a brick wall.

I read stories like these and it inspires me to think a bit deeper about things. Recently I told a friend that a good compass in one’s life is to seek out what gives you a lump in your throat, the rest are just words. Merry Christmas friends.

Wonderful. The music, illustrations, and sliding sound effect reminded me of the game Braid.

I’m obviously out of touch. What do these starbucks people do exactly.

Thanks added to my list. I do believe that with the inevitable obsolescence of most work the system will continue to destabilize and some alternative will arise (maybe not in my lifetime) although I’m not optimistic it won’t by dystopian.

I’m reading a book by a British author called Against the Machine which you may enjoy. It distills this pervasive unease so many have felt of this growth at all cost system that has been rapidly eating the world. The environmental, humanistic, moral, and spiritual costs of this “machine” is sometimes hard to see when it’s all we’ve known.

What is the best / most popular / user friendly terminal http client I can replace postman with. Has a history I can search, save favorites, secure etc.

Sorry didn’t mean to pick on anyone. Even Detroit I heard has had somewhat a recovery in the last decade or so. I guess what stoked my unsettled curiosity was if the narrative of de-industrializion of the west and its impact on the social fabric was worse than I thought.

Appreciate it. Yeah I knew it was a very subjective question. I guess the reason I was shocked was prior I watched British shows like grand design and all I saw was rolling green hills and idyllic life outside the capital. Then in quick succession I watch some YouTubers doing walking tours outside of London and railing against the decline and neglect. So I was just curious what the locals opinion is. That said the same debates are happening here and half the time I feel people are describing different planets.

Thanks. To be more specific on what I’ve seen by YouTubers touring outside London is just boarded up shops, minimal economic hope, lots of abandoned homes again outside London. The narrative being essentially the de industrialization having now gutted the entire economy except for the well off and financial services etc. which of course shocked me cause I always pictured England as quite wealthy and having made that transition out of factory economy quite well. Which then led me to wonder if Britain is just just a few years ahead of the rest of us.

Slightly related: to any British readers, I have a question. In the past few weeks, I have seen more and more YouTube videos showing most of Britain outside of London as being essentially like Detroit. How bad are things really?

I wish there was something for the app. I haven't tried it recently but you could kind of stop the shorts being displayed for a brief period of time before it re-asserted itself. And I already pay for ad-free youtube wish it was at least a premium feature but obviously makes no sense from corporate point of view.

does super-resolution refer to the image processing technique of interpolating/hallucinating higher resolutions? if so, is this a common/respected part of evidence gathering?

What’s the recommendation for the simplest blogging setup to say s3? Req: 0 javascript, simple css, absolutely minimal functions for blogs. My ideal is I open a text file on my Mac in vi, type my thoughts and then save and run some script to publish it and it gets the style and date and index entry automatically.

I think the sense of loss and fear is undeniable for most. None of it is unprecedented, although probably never has the potential for both been more extreme than with AI. The spiritual/psychological solution is always the same though, fully surrender to the loss and fear, then find a way to transcend it.

I often find myself asking the same pair of questions "What are you doing? No, that's this situation's name, what is this really?", and it usually leads to "this is nonesense, it's paying civilizational debt based on a series of decisions that thousands of people made with no clue of where it would lead". Which then is usually followed with "what should you be doing?"...which depending on the day usually ends up being half-jokingly: "I should be living in a small community far from capitalistic excess."

Total newb here - but lets say i want to make a terminal based video game (think old school text / visuals / menus), will something like Libghostty be something relevant to that?

Well these humans would be totally ignorant of what’s going on but that I think would be besides the point because the space nebula would know what they’re doing!

I should have been more clear, I meant our choice as in we did not choose or coerce them to be in our gut but we would have chosen to use them in our civilization’s infrastructure.

Yeah I think if ethics are involved it has to be based on intentions and hence choice. Accidentally stepping on a few million microorganisms is probably ethically ok. Building your civilization in the “enslavement” of gazzilions of microorganisms might be more ethically discussion worthy. I do wonder how plants are different than microorganisms if at all since obviously we farm and eat them.