this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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First the money was in the hardware. Then, the money was in the software. Then, the money was in the services. Now, the money is in the data you can harvest from the users.
If being a sponge for ads, and a source of data to sell and use for training LLMs, is not your thing, using computer systems produced by for profit companies is probably out.
Enshitification isn’t driven by some new and unique greed. It’s the only way left to earn money in the space. Customers WANT subsidized hardware running free software and cloud services. If MS doesn’t give them that somebody else will and that will be that.
I don’t want to blame customers for all this. But to most folks trading something they didn’t know had value (their data and attention) for something that they know has value (software and services) seems like an awesome deal. The corps are following the customers to some extent, and we have to acknowledge that.
They are producing a product that sells for real money and people use it in every scope of their lives. If that isn't enough money to sustain the corporation then allow me to be the first to ask why?
I think it's disingenuous to keep pushing this idea that corporations cannot survive without ever increasing income. It is that precise philosophy that is destroying our world.
The never ending growth thing is complex. But set all of that aside, if your company doesn’t peruse the growth, somebody else will. There is no future where nobody bothers to try and sell to a market that is begging for a product.
Nobody needs Microsoft to exist, but people want free software and services (windows is functionally free, the last time I paid for it was win7). They can take a privacy purist route and change $3-400 for a license w/ an update every 5yrs but the product will die and everyone will switch to chromebooks.
Microsoft can “be better”, and then they would stop being relevant. If you want a little better, pay the Apple tax, if you want A LOT better pay the time tax and use Linux.
That's about the most down-to-Earth take I've heard. Spot on.
It’s not about sustaining, it’s about wringing every possible ounce of profit out of anything you do
What would happen if your employer said you would never again get a raise? Most people would probably start looking for another job. At a minimum, they expect their long-term income to keep with inflation.
But if employee salaries are expected to grow over time, then so are the company revenues that pay those salaries. A company whose revenues stop growing is like an employee whose salary stops growing. They will not last long at whatever they are doing.
You're talking about inflation. That's not perpetual growth. It's completely different.
Profits that rise to keep pace with inflation are not considered growth.
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell". It's also completely unsustainable long term.
So, if I'm making enough money to not get in the way of happiness and my boss said I'm not getting any more raises? Wait, I've already been there for several years having hit the top of my pay scale. Why would i care as long as we're getting our annual COLA to keep pace with inflation?
Businesses do not need to constantly grow to be successful (which, before you get pedantic about the precise wording the person you replied to used, is what they were referring to, not the literal increase in income at any level just to keep pace with inflation)
The vast majority of employees are not at the top of their pay scale. If you told them their salary will never grow faster then inflation, unlike you they would look for another job.
The average growth in corporate income over the past two decades is 4%/year. That's comparable to what the average employee expects from their long-term salary growth.