7 ms·

We live in a time where almost everything is getting worse. Products are getting smaller, service is getting worse, businesses are closing, quality is going do

We live in a time where almost everything is getting worse. Products are getting smaller, service is getting worse, businesses are closing, quality is going down. I don't think I've ever experienced such an obvious decline in commercial society in my entire life. Is it the financialization of everything? Is that we reached peak growth and profit increases are only possibly through extreme optimization? Is it financial inequality?

Animats 2y ago
Sometimes it's monopoly. Not this time, though; Red Lobster was a minor player. Red Lobster was a leveraged buyout. (Most "private equity" is leveraged buyouts. The buyer seldom puts up full cash.) Plus the equity to debt conversion. Tax law favors debt too much.
JohnClark1337 2y ago
[dead]
emptysongglass 2y ago
Oh man I FEEL this deeply. I was just wondering if it's just me feeling like everything is on a highway to terrible. - Prices in my city, just this year, have felt like they've jumped 10 or 15 percent. - I've been working in tech for a decade now and for the first time a new company simply refused to negotiate salary. - I feel financially worse off than 5 years ago making a third of what I make now. - Housing prices have exploded. I worry I will never own a home. - Denmark has started deleting public holidays to save our social welfare state. - Health care is the worst it's ever been. You can not get basic health diagnostics for most things in Denmark without screaming. - Europe has a literal war at our doorstep. - Public transit prices have jumped in the last year. - Good quality grocery stores have closed and been replaced with discount chains. The quality of the produce is terrible. - Democracy feels increasingly shittier and hijacked by two extremist poles of very-online meme-thought. - Gen Z is looking like the most garbage generation of the last two centuries with more mental illness than any generation in history. - Everything has become a political lightning rod. I feel exploited by invisible forces I can't see or touch or name. I feel as if I have no mastery over my own life. I no longer know why I continue to contribute to a society that does not give anything back to me for my labor and exploits the best years of my life for taxes that do not improve my lot in life. Can someone tell me everything is going to get better?
- onemoresoop 2y ago
  >Can someone tell me everything is going to get better? Yes but only after it will get much worse.
  - yoyohello13 2y ago
    Yeah, seems like we are just in the same cycle of boom/bust as every other human civilization in history.
    - tanseydavid 2y ago
      4th turning
      - billyvandory 2y ago
        exactly. we're at turn #4 currently
- mikrl 2y ago
  > Gen Z is looking like the most garbage generation of the last two centuries Have you ever met a millennial? t. 1992 cusper
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    Boomer checking in. I totally blame my generation. We spent our whole lives sucking the long term value out of everything we could, for our short term gain. Leaving your generations with massive debt and nothing to show for it. You’re welcome.
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      Yea, I hate generation wars, but it seems to be increasingly true that most of the economic value created in the last, say, 50 years, was currently either 1. captured by a few extremely wealthy individuals, or 2. locked up in the retirement accounts and real estate of people over 60 years old. I feel like we (the younger generations) are all sitting here holding our breath in this stasis, waiting for that generation to die, and hoping those portfolios somehow get magically spread across the population. I don't know what mechanism is available to do that spread, but if it doesn't happen, where will all that locked up wealth go?
chankstein38 2y ago
I've been thinking about this a lot too. It just feels like all ends of the spectrum, for a consumer, are crashing down. Everything is harvesting and selling data, stock at stores is low and usually favors the generic (and sometimes lesser) option over the higher quality names... Apps like facebook, twitter, IG, tiktok, reddit, and youtube are making life worse for their users. Overall, it is kind of a depressing time to observe.
- mattgreenrocks 2y ago
  It is usually from the wreckage that the next big things emerge. Just how these things work.
nickpsecurity 2y ago
Most people used to believe in Jesus Christ with values built on the Bible. That was true from lay people to Ivy League colleges to even folks in prison. His blessings with His accountability both made many good things happen and limited lots of damage we’d cause. America was prosperous as the Bible said it would be. Over the decades, people turned away from God and those values to chase new ones: money first, pleasure first, self/ego first, atheism, subjectivism, Marxism. These by themselves, if increasing enough, guarantee massive amounts of suffering for people. Whereas, the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians only does good for people when you increase it. Society made their choice. As in Romans 1, God handed us over to our depraved minds and sins to let us feel the full consequences of selfish, godless, subjective societies. Everything has gotten worse. The solution is to repent and turn back to what God gave that worked before. Then, gradually improve ourselves in any weak areas. Wr must bake righteous values back into our families, businesses, and government. Inward change creates positive, outward results.
- quantified 2y ago
  When and where did that really ever work? Evidence please. The bible says nothing about America. I assume that abolishing slavery was where we turned away from biblical principles.
  - nickpsecurity 2y ago
    You don’t even really need it. You can go right to the roots. Let’s compare two sets of things on a basic level. 1. You know God will judge what good or evil you did at the end of your life. You factor that into your decisions. 2. You think we’re an accident, nothing matters, people are just over animals, actually just chemical reactions, universe itself disappears in enough time, nothing matters in the long term unless you say so, and no accountability for any horrible thing you did. Which is more likely to lead to righteous behavior? Which is more likely to lead to destructive behavior? Next set are Christ’s basic commandments vs the world’s: 1. Love and obey God first. That means truth, justice, avoiding self-destructive behavior, family, and good work ethic. From there, love others as you would yourself in all your interactions with them. 2. Do whatever you want to whoever you want. It might be limited by whatever is popular at the time which will change. The Devil has most media focusing on individualism over family, squeezing max profit out of everything, and chasing pleasures with reckless abandon. Which of these logically creates more good? Which leads to more damage? I think we could stop there. The consequences of just those differences in believes are tremendous. Those in set 2 are currently doing the most damage in all areas of life. They include people who identify as Christian but don’t live like it. Lip service. Whereas, my first-hand experience with hundreds of people following Christ and Biblical teaching is that it’s working. Their problems often come from sin, not obedience.
RestlessMind 2y ago
In case it helps you, I find the following products / services have improved their quality and offering in the past decade: TVs: I get a much nicer TV now for the same amount what I paid for a crappier one in 2012 Smartphones: very powerful and do a lot of things better (eg. camera, connectivity) Entertainment: Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Prime, ... you can pick 1-2 of those, binge all you want and then rotate. Costs < 30$/mo Travel options: Ok, even in 2014, there were very good travel options. But I see a lot more options these days (direct flights from SF, more obscure locations on the travel map etc) Cars: I bought a new car in 2021 (previous one was 2010). New one is cheaper and has some nicer features (rear view & other cameras, various warning signals)
- genocidicbunny 2y ago
  Sorry, I don't think that helps at all. If anything, it comes across with a "You should skip the avocado toast" energy. The vast majority of these things are not all that important to most people, not like prices of groceries, household goods, clothing, energy, childcare costs, transport costs..etc. I don't care that cars have nicer features now, if buying a new car is most of my annual wages pre-tax. I don't care that I can fly to more interesting destinations from SF when I can't afford to go to urgent care without having to switch to rice and beans for a week. I do on the other hand care when my grocery bills double unless I spent multiple hours a week collecting coupons and driving around to find sales. I care when I have to wake up in the morning shivering because I can't afford to keep the heat at even close to a comfortable temperature.
  - RestlessMind 2y ago
    > The vast majority of these things are not all that important to most people Hmm I don't think you and I share the same definitions of "most people" then, or "important" for that matter. Just to give 2 examples: >85% of US adult population uses smartphone. The way smartphone revolution has occurred and the big role they play in our lives (entertainment, communication, public services, finances) in just 15-16 years since its invention is truly astonishing. >90% US households have a car. ~40K Americans die every year in car road accidents. Improving car safety is literally a matter of life and death and numbers prove[1] that we are doing better over time. [1] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatality-trends/deaths-and-rates/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...
Intralexical 2y ago
Corporate consolidation, some would say. IIRC, at some point in the last some decades, the US got the bright idea that antitrust isn't really worth enforcing if potentially anticompetitive business practices and mergers can also result in lower prices. That kinda works— Until a small handful of corporations gain enough power that there is not really any meaningful competition anymore, and they can effectively engage in price-gouging with monopoly power. Which has now happened, apparently, in most industries. …Hence everything getting worse. …I think there was an article I read some time back that explained it really well. But I can't seem to find it, so these links will have to do. The Guardian/Youtube ones might seem clickbaity, but that man was also Clinton's Secretary of Labor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/11/companies-inflation-price-gouging https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/11/compan... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMZKegjJurk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMZKegjJurk https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/08/biden-assault-monopolies-498876 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/08/biden-assault-monop... https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down https://www.theverge.com/23645057/taylor-swift-ticketmaster-eras-tour-beyonce-antitrust-monopoly-reagan-senate-hearing-congress https://www.theverge.com/23645057/taylor-swift-ticketmaster-... https://news.yale.edu/2024/04/24/lax-antitrust-enforcement-linked-rising-hospital-prices https://news.yale.edu/2024/04/24/lax-antitrust-enforcement-l... https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/675862 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/675862 Ticketmaster, Facebook, grocery prices, even the Boeing 737 mess— I suppose a lot of these problems do basically come down to a company or an oligopoly getting so powerful that nobody can hold it accountable anymore.
mensetmanusman 2y ago
It’s what inverting the age pyramid feels like as the average age of society keeps increasing and risk mitigation becomes the meaning of life, espoused in phrases like ‘stay safe!’ We are slowly in the midst of going through a black plague of sorts when it comes to the % change in population that is occurring, except we will be left with an elderly population instead of a dynamic healthy and young population.

Animats 2y ago

Sometimes it's monopoly. Not this time, though; Red Lobster was a minor player. Red Lobster was a leveraged buyout. (Most "private equity" is leveraged buyouts. The buyer seldom puts up full cash.) Plus the equity to debt conversion. Tax law favors debt too much.

JohnClark1337 2y ago

[dead]

emptysongglass 2y ago

Oh man I FEEL this deeply. I was just wondering if it's just me feeling like everything is on a highway to terrible. - Prices in my city, just this year, have felt like they've jumped 10 or 15 percent. - I've been working in tech for a decade now and for the first time a new company simply refused to negotiate salary. - I feel financially worse off than 5 years ago making a third of what I make now. - Housing prices have exploded. I worry I will never own a home. - Denmark has started deleting public holidays to save our social welfare state. - Health care is the worst it's ever been. You can not get basic health diagnostics for most things in Denmark without screaming. - Europe has a literal war at our doorstep. - Public transit prices have jumped in the last year. - Good quality grocery stores have closed and been replaced with discount chains. The quality of the produce is terrible. - Democracy feels increasingly shittier and hijacked by two extremist poles of very-online meme-thought. - Gen Z is looking like the most garbage generation of the last two centuries with more mental illness than any generation in history. - Everything has become a political lightning rod. I feel exploited by invisible forces I can't see or touch or name. I feel as if I have no mastery over my own life. I no longer know why I continue to contribute to a society that does not give anything back to me for my labor and exploits the best years of my life for taxes that do not improve my lot in life. Can someone tell me everything is going to get better?

onemoresoop 2y ago
>Can someone tell me everything is going to get better? Yes but only after it will get much worse.
- yoyohello13 2y ago
  Yeah, seems like we are just in the same cycle of boom/bust as every other human civilization in history.
  - tanseydavid 2y ago
    4th turning
    - billyvandory 2y ago
      exactly. we're at turn #4 currently
mikrl 2y ago
> Gen Z is looking like the most garbage generation of the last two centuries Have you ever met a millennial? t. 1992 cusper
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  Boomer checking in. I totally blame my generation. We spent our whole lives sucking the long term value out of everything we could, for our short term gain. Leaving your generations with massive debt and nothing to show for it. You’re welcome.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    Yea, I hate generation wars, but it seems to be increasingly true that most of the economic value created in the last, say, 50 years, was currently either 1. captured by a few extremely wealthy individuals, or 2. locked up in the retirement accounts and real estate of people over 60 years old. I feel like we (the younger generations) are all sitting here holding our breath in this stasis, waiting for that generation to die, and hoping those portfolios somehow get magically spread across the population. I don't know what mechanism is available to do that spread, but if it doesn't happen, where will all that locked up wealth go?

chankstein38 2y ago

I've been thinking about this a lot too. It just feels like all ends of the spectrum, for a consumer, are crashing down. Everything is harvesting and selling data, stock at stores is low and usually favors the generic (and sometimes lesser) option over the higher quality names... Apps like facebook, twitter, IG, tiktok, reddit, and youtube are making life worse for their users. Overall, it is kind of a depressing time to observe.

mattgreenrocks 2y ago
It is usually from the wreckage that the next big things emerge. Just how these things work.

nickpsecurity 2y ago

Most people used to believe in Jesus Christ with values built on the Bible. That was true from lay people to Ivy League colleges to even folks in prison. His blessings with His accountability both made many good things happen and limited lots of damage we’d cause. America was prosperous as the Bible said it would be. Over the decades, people turned away from God and those values to chase new ones: money first, pleasure first, self/ego first, atheism, subjectivism, Marxism. These by themselves, if increasing enough, guarantee massive amounts of suffering for people. Whereas, the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians only does good for people when you increase it. Society made their choice. As in Romans 1, God handed us over to our depraved minds and sins to let us feel the full consequences of selfish, godless, subjective societies. Everything has gotten worse. The solution is to repent and turn back to what God gave that worked before. Then, gradually improve ourselves in any weak areas. Wr must bake righteous values back into our families, businesses, and government. Inward change creates positive, outward results.

quantified 2y ago
When and where did that really ever work? Evidence please. The bible says nothing about America. I assume that abolishing slavery was where we turned away from biblical principles.
- nickpsecurity 2y ago
  You don’t even really need it. You can go right to the roots. Let’s compare two sets of things on a basic level. 1. You know God will judge what good or evil you did at the end of your life. You factor that into your decisions. 2. You think we’re an accident, nothing matters, people are just over animals, actually just chemical reactions, universe itself disappears in enough time, nothing matters in the long term unless you say so, and no accountability for any horrible thing you did. Which is more likely to lead to righteous behavior? Which is more likely to lead to destructive behavior? Next set are Christ’s basic commandments vs the world’s: 1. Love and obey God first. That means truth, justice, avoiding self-destructive behavior, family, and good work ethic. From there, love others as you would yourself in all your interactions with them. 2. Do whatever you want to whoever you want. It might be limited by whatever is popular at the time which will change. The Devil has most media focusing on individualism over family, squeezing max profit out of everything, and chasing pleasures with reckless abandon. Which of these logically creates more good? Which leads to more damage? I think we could stop there. The consequences of just those differences in believes are tremendous. Those in set 2 are currently doing the most damage in all areas of life. They include people who identify as Christian but don’t live like it. Lip service. Whereas, my first-hand experience with hundreds of people following Christ and Biblical teaching is that it’s working. Their problems often come from sin, not obedience.

RestlessMind 2y ago

In case it helps you, I find the following products / services have improved their quality and offering in the past decade: TVs: I get a much nicer TV now for the same amount what I paid for a crappier one in 2012 Smartphones: very powerful and do a lot of things better (eg. camera, connectivity) Entertainment: Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Prime, ... you can pick 1-2 of those, binge all you want and then rotate. Costs < 30$/mo Travel options: Ok, even in 2014, there were very good travel options. But I see a lot more options these days (direct flights from SF, more obscure locations on the travel map etc) Cars: I bought a new car in 2021 (previous one was 2010). New one is cheaper and has some nicer features (rear view & other cameras, various warning signals)

genocidicbunny 2y ago
Sorry, I don't think that helps at all. If anything, it comes across with a "You should skip the avocado toast" energy. The vast majority of these things are not all that important to most people, not like prices of groceries, household goods, clothing, energy, childcare costs, transport costs..etc. I don't care that cars have nicer features now, if buying a new car is most of my annual wages pre-tax. I don't care that I can fly to more interesting destinations from SF when I can't afford to go to urgent care without having to switch to rice and beans for a week. I do on the other hand care when my grocery bills double unless I spent multiple hours a week collecting coupons and driving around to find sales. I care when I have to wake up in the morning shivering because I can't afford to keep the heat at even close to a comfortable temperature.
- RestlessMind 2y ago
  > The vast majority of these things are not all that important to most people Hmm I don't think you and I share the same definitions of "most people" then, or "important" for that matter. Just to give 2 examples: >85% of US adult population uses smartphone. The way smartphone revolution has occurred and the big role they play in our lives (entertainment, communication, public services, finances) in just 15-16 years since its invention is truly astonishing. >90% US households have a car. ~40K Americans die every year in car road accidents. Improving car safety is literally a matter of life and death and numbers prove[1] that we are doing better over time. [1] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatality-trends/deaths-and-rates/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...

Intralexical 2y ago

Corporate consolidation, some would say. IIRC, at some point in the last some decades, the US got the bright idea that antitrust isn't really worth enforcing if potentially anticompetitive business practices and mergers can also result in lower prices. That kinda works— Until a small handful of corporations gain enough power that there is not really any meaningful competition anymore, and they can effectively engage in price-gouging with monopoly power. Which has now happened, apparently, in most industries. …Hence everything getting worse. …I think there was an article I read some time back that explained it really well. But I can't seem to find it, so these links will have to do. The Guardian/Youtube ones might seem clickbaity, but that man was also Clinton's Secretary of Labor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/11/companies-inflation-price-gouging https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/11/compan... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMZKegjJurk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMZKegjJurk https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/08/biden-assault-monopolies-498876 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/08/biden-assault-monop... https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down https://www.theverge.com/23645057/taylor-swift-ticketmaster-eras-tour-beyonce-antitrust-monopoly-reagan-senate-hearing-congress https://www.theverge.com/23645057/taylor-swift-ticketmaster-... https://news.yale.edu/2024/04/24/lax-antitrust-enforcement-linked-rising-hospital-prices https://news.yale.edu/2024/04/24/lax-antitrust-enforcement-l... https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/675862 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/675862 Ticketmaster, Facebook, grocery prices, even the Boeing 737 mess— I suppose a lot of these problems do basically come down to a company or an oligopoly getting so powerful that nobody can hold it accountable anymore.

mensetmanusman 2y ago

It’s what inverting the age pyramid feels like as the average age of society keeps increasing and risk mitigation becomes the meaning of life, espoused in phrases like ‘stay safe!’ We are slowly in the midst of going through a black plague of sorts when it comes to the % change in population that is occurring, except we will be left with an elderly population instead of a dynamic healthy and young population.