Perhaps it’s just nostalgic romanticization, but I seem to recall that product quality used to be far more important: Manufacturers vied for customers’ favor and therefore focused on offering the best value for money or innovative products to outdo the competition.
This seems to me to have been lost to a large extent due to the fact that unbridled capitalism—likely exacerbated by the Internet’s tendency toward centralization—has led to increased monopolization, so that providers have now shifted to exploit their customers to the maximum, since they no longer have the option of switching to any provider other than perhaps two or three gigantic corporations that dominate their respective business sectors unchallenged.
This seems to me to be a development that was certainly already in the making in the 1990s and early 2000s, but which has intensified—largely due to the internet’s trend toward globally centralized platforms—to such an extent that now even fewer, even more unscrupulous billionaires can abuse their unrestricted market power not just nationally or at least to some extent locally, but internationally.
It seems to me that this development has to do with the fact that the internet represents a global market, but there are simply no global authorities that could counteract the formation of monopolies on an international level.
It seems to me to be the logical consequence of the predominantly U.S.-led cutthroat capitalism that has essentially lost its social function of distributing goods in favor of becoming an instrument of power for the multi-billionaires who have become far too powerful. The result, it seems to me, is a kind of new monarchy of billionaires who have become so powerful that they have been able to place themselves above the community and the law—with fatal consequences for the general public.
Of course, these immensely influential private individuals with their boundless greed already existed in the 1990s, but in my opinion, their influence wasn’t quite as far-reaching back then.
Perhaps it’s just nostalgic romanticization, but I seem to recall that product quality used to be far more important: Manufacturers vied for customers’ favor and therefore focused on offering the best value for money or innovative products to outdo the competition.
This seems to me to have been lost to a large extent due to the fact that unbridled capitalism—likely exacerbated by the Internet’s tendency toward centralization—has led to increased monopolization, so that providers have now shifted to exploit their customers to the maximum, since they no longer have the option of switching to any provider other than perhaps two or three gigantic corporations that dominate their respective business sectors unchallenged.
This seems to me to be a development that was certainly already in the making in the 1990s and early 2000s, but which has intensified—largely due to the internet’s trend toward globally centralized platforms—to such an extent that now even fewer, even more unscrupulous billionaires can abuse their unrestricted market power not just nationally or at least to some extent locally, but internationally.
It seems to me that this development has to do with the fact that the internet represents a global market, but there are simply no global authorities that could counteract the formation of monopolies on an international level.
It seems to me to be the logical consequence of the predominantly U.S.-led cutthroat capitalism that has essentially lost its social function of distributing goods in favor of becoming an instrument of power for the multi-billionaires who have become far too powerful. The result, it seems to me, is a kind of new monarchy of billionaires who have become so powerful that they have been able to place themselves above the community and the law—with fatal consequences for the general public.
Of course, these immensely influential private individuals with their boundless greed already existed in the 1990s, but in my opinion, their influence wasn’t quite as far-reaching back then.