> 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 23 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.