As long as free markets, open societies and capitalism are not merely the tools to achieve prosperity but serve as guiding values, there is no going back to the

As long as free markets, open societies and capitalism are not merely the tools to achieve prosperity but serve as guiding values, there is no going back to the kind of beauty we once took for granted, and which you can see & feel in every old town part of ancient cities. The current aesthetics are derived from applying the following optimization functions: - cost: cheap / simple / flat is preferred over elaborate / ornate / pleasant - power relations: megacorps and their necessarily globalist lowest-common-denominator taste determine what artists/graphic designers/... produce, instead of the singular "soul in the game" creator - maximal international compatibility of products and services, resulting in a loss of regional diversity and the emergence of interchangeable architecture - centralisation & accumulation of bureaucratic rules, regulation & power, resulting in regulatory capture / zoning laws / a plethora of second order effects - increasing credentialism, leading to more things becoming "academic" and thus eliminate craftsmanship and its culture - see the decline of architecture - joint stock corporations and the principal/agent problems that necessarily come with them, due to decoupling profit from responsibility