This is akin to arguing "nothing ever changes or improves in Liberal democracies", when policy history doesn't reflect that.

Large parties represent large coalitions, so there are more compromises and things happen slower, but they still happen. Not always for the better, as we're seeing when populists are elected.

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swed420 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> This is akin to arguing "nothing ever changes or improves in Liberal democracies", when policy history doesn't reflect that.

Ever-growing wealth disparities, eroded rights, mass enshitification in a race to the bottom, and widespread hatred of ones neighbor over fake outrage culture war propaganda disseminated from corporate media are not a trends of improvement. They are trends of decline, unless you're of the class who has their doomsday bunker on standby.

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lanfeust6 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> Ever-growing wealth disparities

Higher concentration of wealth is not new, it's happened many times and dissipated many times. Real-wages are still growing, which is what we care about qua improvements in our well being (and what attracts immigrants). The key risk though is regulatory capture from consolidation of tech companies (much of this "wealth" in question is stock valuation, which tends to get reinvested in companies), but anti-trust is still a thing, and has been wielded relatively recently.

> enshitification

This is about consumer products, not government policy. Buy an alternative, you have those choices.

> widespread hatred of ones neighbor over fake outrage culture war propaganda disseminated from corporate media

Based on polling, the most salient issues seem to reflect economic anxieties. Even stances on immigration are really about that.

When the established parties and institutions fail, people lash out and elect populists. The populist fervor will wane once housing affordability is appropriately tackled for instance.

> not a trends of improvement

Yeah, not everything improved in the short-run, that isn't remarkable. Many things did. Look at real-wages, look at the extreme poverty rate globally as defined by the UN. I could go on.

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psadauskas 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Higher concentration of wealth is not new, it's happened many times and dissipated many times.

That's a very clinical way to put it. Usually when its "dissipated", its through war or economic depression or both, and a great many people who never had any wealth suffer needlessly, while the wealthy rarely do.

It would be nice if we could like, _not_ do that, and try something different for once, instead of throwing up our hands and saying "well that's just how its always been!"

	▲	lanfeust6 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You're forgetting anti-trust. Standard Oil controlled 90% of the oil production in the U.S. until it was splintered into numerous companies. We're not really at the point where this needs to be done for tech. Also, dynastic wealth itself doesn't sustain itself well, and dwindles in a generation. See: the aforementioned Rockefeller, whose grandchildren are nowhere near as rich. Notwithstanding that many of the wealthy (in particular, Bill Gates) are donating the majority of their wealth when they die.

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swed420 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> This is about consumer products, not government policy.

You speak as if these things are unrelated.

> Buy an alternative, you have those choices.

Increasingly, we don't:

"Modern Capitalism Is Weirder Than You Think: It also no longer works as advertised"

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/how-asset-managers-h... (https://archive.is/wSmtd)

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lanfeust6 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> You speak as if these things are unrelated.

State the connection, because it seems like your next argument is going to be "the government didn't stop them", as though that's their job.

> Increasingly, we don't:

Think of a single enshittified product that matters to you for which there is no alternative but to use it.

This also all pales in contrast to the conveniences and improvements afforded over time. You can now access and stream basically any music you want for free, for example. Television sets are now commodities, which tend to be cheaper adjusted for inflation. Etc etc. So the rhetoric about enshittification doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

	▲	swed420 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> State the connection, because it seems like your next argument is going to be "the government didn't stop them", as though that's their job. It's not their job to break up monopolies and ever-shifting financial abstractions a few steps ahead of the law that enable monopolistic behavior? > Think of a single enshittified product that matters to you for which there is no alternative but to use it. * Mobile devices and their respective walled gardens if you expect to do something as simple as access your own bank account or reliably receive text messages * Social media which only really works when lots of people are on any given platform * Food that is safe, nutritious, and sustainable > Television sets are now commodities, which tend to be cheaper adjusted for inflation. Oh neat, they didn't enshitify the legacy propaganda client devices yet. How nice of them, and quite the measure of progress.

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watwut 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Based on polling, the most salient issues seem to reflect economic anxieties. Even stances on immigration are really about that.

Meh, the economic anxiety voters are systematically voting for economically worst performing parties. They may say "it is economy" in polls, but it is hardly believable.

The difference between men and women in voting patterns is not about economy.

	▲	lanfeust6 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Average voters don't understand much about the economy, but that doesn't mean they aren't reacting to externalities like housing costs, prices, or other worse outcomes.

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soulofmischief 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This take completely ignores the amount of money in politics and that both parties have funding from overlapping sources which in turn represent how similar the two parties are on certain key issues such as the Palestinian genocide.

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lanfeust6 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Notwithstanding that this sum is smaller than people think, seeing bipartisan stances does not in itself reflect a failure; it can just as easily be a good thing. All this reveals is that you have a pet issue that isn't being serviced well currently by the 2 parties, but tides and voter sentiment change; within a few short years most people have soured on Israel, and this will be reflected in forthcoming elections.

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soulofmischief 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't have a single "pet issue", I care about a great deal of issues that neither party actually cares about addressing, and it's well-established that both parties push conservative, right-leaning neoliberal policy. I don't see these changes occurring overnight or fast enough to be acceptable.

	▲	lanfeust6 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		lol Trump's party has not been the least bit neoliberal, it is populist and protectionist. Brutal immigration crackdowns and tarrifs are the opposite of neoliberal. Even Biden was a departure, with tariffs and CHIPS act. None of that is neoliberal, which peaked in the Clinton era. Incidentally, among the most effective remedies for what ails us now, like zoning reform, would be derided as "neoliberal" by progressives, though the evidence speaks for itself, and YIMBYs are making in-roads. That doesn't mean that state capacity doesn't have it's place. We historically would spend more on innovation, on NASA, DARPA and the like, and that matters a great deal. But it doesn't preclude removing red tape that hinders govt and private sector efforts. > a great deal of issues Ok, name some. Realistically, there aren't many.