Just my personal anecdata, it took my a while to put a finger on it, but it seemed like something started to change in products in the 90s. Bag of chips started to fill up with more air and less chips, candy bars got smaller, airlines started reducing seat sizes. Super huge discount? retail stores opened, that you usually needed a membership card. Walmart started offering the cheapest sourced product from around the world that was often just slightly inferior to what you use to be able to get, or the price on the higher quality item went up while the slightly lower quality item price went down. Washing machines started using all these cheap plastic parts that more easily wear down or break. Electronics started to get added to everything whether it is needed or not, usually for switches where the electronic part is cheaper than the mechanical equivalent.

And I realized, this is what people want, in the sense of this is what they will pay for, this is how they vote with their wallet. What I want is not this, but it is what society wants.

I disagree that it is what people want. Nobody wants a smaller chocolate bar for the same amount of money, more cramped seats, washing machines that break and need constant replacement, etc.

Massive corporate consolidation means that when you're looking at the rack of chocolate bars there's a good chance that just 2 companies made all of them. You have the illusion of choice.

None of this happened over-night. It's a slow steady financial optimization in all industries all at the same time. It's very hard to vote with your wallet when there's very little difference.

> And I realized, this is what people want, in the sense of this is what they will pay for, this is how they vote with their wallet. What I want is not this, but it is what society wants.

I don't think you can really say they want it, because in many instances they are manipulated or have no other choice.

> Just my personal anecdata, it took my a while to put a finger on it, but it seemed like something started to change in products in the 90s.

The electronic spreadsheet.

I believe the change you're observing is the result of the widespread adoption of computers. This is what a data-driven society looks like. Corporations have the ability to finetune the margins of exactly how much anti-consumerism they can get away with before upsetting enough people that a given anti-consumer decision isn't more profitable than not doing it.

In a sense, it is the people's fault for their current level of tolerance, but at the same time, a data-driven society will converge on an equilibrium just within the razor-thin margin of what people will tolerate, in the name of 'efficiency'.

Bag of chips started to fill up with more air and less chips, candy bars got smaller, airlines started reducing seat sizes.

The phrase you're looking for is "value engineering."

There are also other factors.

Part of the reason that Pringles cans are mostly air is so that the soap company that makes them can sell fewer chips, but retain the same amount of visual space on the store shelf. The product is the billboard. Some brands pay for that space on the shelf, so they're going to use every bit of it.

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