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> that's a very strong statement that requires some refinement Yes, but much of that refinement would be the gritty details of pushing back on awful self-servi

> that's a very strong statement that requires some refinement Yes, but much of that refinement would be the gritty details of pushing back on awful self-serving definitions that were carefully crafted to mislead. Flouting them altogether is a strong opener. Contrast to the boring analytical speech: "The notion of value espoused by neoliberal economics is wealth-weighted while the colloquial definition of the word does not have a wealth-weight attached, sometimes even the opposite (see: feeding orphans). This loophole is large enough to march 1000 elephants through and wage a class war. "Value Creation" is not about doing what people want, it's about doing what wealth-weighted people want, and as inequality grows that increasingly means doing what rich people want, which is primarily to pump assets so that they can get paid for being rich. This twist of terminology is how you can brainwash someone into thinking that enshittification, in all its forms, is somehow for the greater good, when it's actually just for the good of rich people who want to get paid for being rich." The boring analytical speech is theoretically the stronger argument, but if theoretically stronger arguments won elections we wouldn't be here. So the best move is just to reverse-uno the "government bad, drown it in a bathtub, private sector good" propaganda.

hodgehog11 11mo ago
But even the analytical speech is too strong: humanity has been down that road and it is fraught with other problems. Government isn't necessarily better either and like everything it must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Enshittification is inevitable, but would be easily undone if the anti-trust laws were properly enforced. It's a beautiful balancing act, and we can't get there by black-and-white "government bad/good, private bad/good". At least, that's what I think. It seems that people will only willingly act in the common good for small communities; at the level of government, you either enforce the common good, or you take advantage of greed and try to loosely direct it into the interests of the common good. Right now there is an argument to be made that we are not successfully achieving the latter strategy as "Value Creation" is now a bastardization of its original intent. But the former option is too diabolical to consider.

hodgehog11 11mo ago

But even the analytical speech is too strong: humanity has been down that road and it is fraught with other problems. Government isn't necessarily better either and like everything it must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Enshittification is inevitable, but would be easily undone if the anti-trust laws were properly enforced. It's a beautiful balancing act, and we can't get there by black-and-white "government bad/good, private bad/good". At least, that's what I think. It seems that people will only willingly act in the common good for small communities; at the level of government, you either enforce the common good, or you take advantage of greed and try to loosely direct it into the interests of the common good. Right now there is an argument to be made that we are not successfully achieving the latter strategy as "Value Creation" is now a bastardization of its original intent. But the former option is too diabolical to consider.