the same process

It doesn’t necessarily involve the middle man, who is ultimately the bigger fish that enshittifiers are looking to land. I think that’s relevant. Enshittification’s process involves capturing both a “retail” user base and a business user base and then squeezing both.

Edit. Enshittification is layered and more specific to industries and markets that are not inherently profitable. It starts with seed money being burned for that initial user base and fucks over everyone up and down the chain because the business is not really profitable otherwise. Skimp/shrinkflation is more about squeezing more profit than you are already making.

I’ve see it used a lot recently to describe the general degradation of quality in service of increasing profits. I think technically, it is not enshittification. Below is my general definition of the process enshittification describes. Repost from another comment.

1. Attract users/customers with high quality services/products to create a captive/dependent user base.
2. Attract business customers (ex. advertisers or businesses that can benefit from access to the user base in some way) by offering them high value services by fucking over your captive user base create a captive/dependent busiess customer base.
3. Fuck over your captive business customers to increase your own profit.

A word that includes the word “shit” in it has a very nice ring to it when describing things getting generally shittier in favor of profit. I suppose language can evolve rapidly and things mean what people believe them to mean.

Edit: As per Wikipedia’s Shrinkflation Entry:

Skimpflation involves a reformulation or other reduction in quality.

I see skimpflation as a form of shrinkflation. The idea is still that the price stays the same but to try and hide the cost increase from the customer they give you less. I guess fewer strawberries per “smoothie” is even more subtle than fewer ounces of the original “smoothie” formula per bottle.

To be a pedantic asshole, technically enshittification is meant to refer to online services that follow an inevitable process of…

1. Attract users/customers with high quality services/products to create a captive/dependent user base.
2. Attract business customers (ex. advertisers or businesses that can benefit from access to the user base in some way) by offering them high value services by fucking over your captive user base create a captive/dependent busiess customer base.
3. Fuck over your captive business customers to increase your own profit.

Admittedly, I see enshittification used colloquially meaning basically “business found a way to fuck over its customers more than usual to increase their profit”. Perhaps that is what you mean by “General enshittification”.

Why do ordinary people seem so unprotected against these shady practices

Assuming you are in the USA, it’s fundamentally because our politics is fueled by private money. The “haves” spend lots of money to make rules that protect and enrich themselves at the expense of the “have nots”. The rich get richer, and the rest of us get a larger share of the burden.

The rich then spend more of their money convincing everyone else that some minority group of their fellow “have nots” are to blame and let us fight amongst ourselves. They starve us but leave us with just enough left to lose so that the price of doing something about it is too high (quitting, losing health insurance, getting arrested at a protest, etc) for most of us to bear.

how can we change this?

Get money out of politics. Get the public to stop blaming their fellow have nots and demand change from the haves.

How does one person even start to address these issues?

Have empathy for and help your neighbors if you can, especially when they take the risks required to push for actual change. Talk to people. Organize. Support/start unions or a mutual aid organization. Go to local government meetings and make your voice heard. Run for local office.

Its easy for a small group of wealthy organizations to tilt specific elections or politics in their favor. It’s much harder them to do that in 1,000+ small communities across the nation.

Fundraisers and charities, when you have a lot money, are rarely acts of charity. They tend to be PR campaigns and power plays.

Honestly, even when the acts have good intentions, they are often quite damaging. The involvement of the wealthy in charity is very similar to their involvement in politics. Their wealth buys influence and gives them a disproportionate say that allows them to ignore and overrule the will of the people and sometimes even reality.

For example, look into the impact of Bill Gates’s “acts of charity” in the education space. He poured money into charter programs that negatively impacted public education. Later studies showed that his programs were not particularly effective.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that a very rich person is convinced by some charlatan that they found the a means to produce free energy. The wealthy person throws tons of money at the idea. How many talented people will be taken from other legit programs because the paycheck at Bullshit Energy Nonprofit is better? These rich people are successful and think they know bestr. Their money ensures they get treated like experts because money makes things happen whether or not those things are helpful.

What happens if the electors get corrupt and decide to vote Trump against the majority of the population?

It is the case that electors are required to vote for the nominee that they pledged to vote for. If you pledged to vote A as an elector you are obligated to vote A. However, as I understand from skimming CHIAFALO ET AL. v. WASHINGTON (2019), it is on pain of penalty…

There might be more to it but I don’t have time to read it all.

Also, it doesn’t really matter what the rules say. The current right wing majority of the SCOTUS doesn’t give a flying fuck about laws, rules, or precedents if they don’t support their views so who the fuck knows.

In maybe third grade I brought my collection of x-men trading cards as part of a sort of show and tell activity. It was in a sizable three-ring binder with those 3x3 slot cars sheets. I had a number of highly valued “foil/hologram” cards. The binder was gone when I got back from lunch. I was devastated and learned to never leave anything of value not locked up if I’m not watching it.

At work we have a kitchen/break room. I’ve had shit stolen from there a lot. Utensils, cups, bowls. Wash it after lunch, put it in the drying rack, come back in an hour to get it and it’s gone. Once my department had a leftover pizza from an event donated to us. I brought in a baking sheet to reheat it in the oven for a lunch morale boost for the team because we had to work that weekend. The sheet, left in a drawer and not visible to any casual observers, was gone by Monday. That was actually the first item I’d had stolen there but I thought I was just s fluke.

I’ve literally bought upgrades and utensil sets for the kitchen (maybe people “stealing” my utensils just forgot to bring a fork, borrowed mine, and brought it home by accident?). Stuff like drying towels, soap dispensers + large refill bottles, a microwave food cover… all stolen. I’d keep getting frustrated with, for example, people leaving the sponge wet in the sink. I’d think “its been a year since I last donated something, maybe it’ll be different this time…” and I’d buy an OXO sponge holder or something and within a week it would be gone. Everyone in my office, including secretaries and cleaning staff, gets paid at least a living wage with great health benefits. Some make well over 100k. I just imagine someone making twice my salary seeing a nice soap dispenser and taking it home… lost a good bit of faith in humanity and affected me way more than it should have.

I found a solution though. Whoever was stealing this shit couldn’t deal with the shame of being reminded that they stole it. I started labeling the donated items using my organization’s acronym with a permanent marker in big visible letters. None of that’s been stolen. I was going to engrave my utensils/dishes but decided instead to look like an asshole and bring my own towel when washing my dishes, drying them immediately, and taking them back to my desk immediately.

[How] do you think Trump, with the powers newly granted to the office he’s again running for, will act in his second term?

There could have been better worlds

So… because Trump didn’t get unhinged to the point where he started a nuclear war, you aren’t worried.

• How did you feel about refusing to concede in the 2020 election and creating uncertainty and doubt about the electoral process among a not insignificant minority of voters?

• How about inciting an angry mob to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power on January 6th?

• How did you feel about hoarding and hiding classified documents so that he could show them off to impress his friends and guests? Maybe even sell them if times are tough?

• How about strong-arming the Republican party and installing his family to run it?

• How do you feel about how his SCOTUS has changed the fundamentals of the US government?

• The Chevron deference?

• Bribery?

• Presidential “immunity” for official acts?

• How do you feel about the loss of the right to have an abortion?

Do you think Trump, with the powers newly granted to the office he’s again running for, will act in his second term? Where is your line?

I see. So what has happened over the last 8 years as a direct result of his election isn’t concerning to you?

now that Trump has been president once, I know what it’s like when that happens and don’t worry that much about it anymore).

That sounds disturbingly like you aren’t all that concerned about what a second Trump presidency would be like. It sounds like you think the first one wasn’t as bad as people thought it would be and the second one will similarly be better than people think. Am I misreading your words?

You can abuse your position as a holdout and potentially fuck everything up in either chamber. Bills require passage in both chambers… but I’m sure you knew that.

I just hope there are enough gains in the house to make his ass irrelevant.

I am just destroyed by this. I genuinely had a little faith in humanity that people wouldn’t fall for this bullshit but I guess I sorely was mistaken.

Laitmer is a conservative, racist piece of shit who is going to take over Manchin’s job of fucking things up for progressives. Fucking hell this sucks.

To top it off, Israel just successfully dropped a political nuke on a critic and will likely have everyone running scared in the future.

It’s not “tries to assassinate” it’s “tries to have assassinated”. Something tells me Trump couldn’t assassinate a stuff deer.

Sadly, old Google doesn’t work either thanks to the efforts of SEO and the AI generated garbage.

The problem with search is that the motives of those being searched aren’t to provide you with the most helpful answer. The motives are to get you to visit their website then stay/click/buy as much as possible. They’ll tailor their content to match whatever algorithm the engine is using.

That’s why Google’s new plan is to collect all of the information ahead of time and skip the “visit other websites” step. Then you can stay/click/buy on their website as much as possible.

Seriously though. Just skip all this nonsense, you selfish piece of shit, and open your wallet so the hungry corpos can feast on its contents - they have poor, innocent, starving shareholders to feed… you monster.

USA here. They’d likely consider this to be extremely patronizing, but I consider most conservative voters to be unaware of what it is they are actually preaching. It’s crazy but the more extreme their views get, the more I’m convinced they’re misinformed and misled. Some folks at the top of their pyramid I legitimately hate - I have no doubt they know exactly what they are doing.

So many of conservative beliefs just fly in the face of reality. I hate that they’re perpetuating the harm that the beliefs and resulting policies cause, but seeing as how they are mostly based on clear and obvious lies, I have to assume that most of the supporters just don’t realize they are being lied to and have invested emotionally in an identity that actively harms their own interests.

While I agree with your sentiment, I do feel like it is a step in the right direction and will help a great many people in poverty.

Going straight from one economic system to another is likely to be an extremely violent process. I’m hoping that this would act as a stepping stone towards socialism rather than a life preserver for capitalism.

Or you could mandate that corporations, instead of being legally required to make the line go up at the expense of anyone they can exploit, are required to pursue less environmentally destructive practices. I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of them already did research on this but found it impacted their bottom line and dismissed it.

This is a ridiculous argument and, honestly, reminds me of corporate thinking. Is the line going up this quarter? That’s all that matters. Yes, assuming inflation is CPI, the last year has seen wage growth. For two years before that, it showed an even more severe wage decline. It seems a bit out of touch to say “Hey, look, I know your savings are dry and your spouse dropped out of the work force because childcare costs outpaced their income but it’s starting to get better! If we use this particular method to examine your well-being the last year was back to normal so quit whing and be grateful!”

The first article linked is alleged to demonstrate that wages have exceeded inflation for over a year. That article includes text like this after this graph:

if we look at the fourth quarter of 2019, which was the last quarter before COVID, the real wage is $362. Now nearly four years later, it sits only $3 higher at $365. Four years of zero wage growth is also something that could perhaps bother people.

So instead they looked at a longitudinal study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, which assumes CPI is the rate of inflation. They ended up with this CPI adjusted wage growth graph.. Even with their metric it shows wage growth being in the red from early 2021 and not recovering until 2023.

There is a difference.

…but I expect you couldn’t care less and just want to dissuade people from voting for Biden so Trump can lead the US into Fascism.