Comment by sofixa
2 years ago
> Capitalism repeatedly creates situations where new things are created that make everyone's lives better, and existing things get cheaper and better over time
In theory. In practice, can you really say that existing things are getting cheaper and better, generally? Most of the Western world is seeing unprecedented price increases combined with record profits in multiple industries (so it's not just general inflation) combined with drastic quality and quantity decreases, combined with "enshitification" across multiple industries.
I'd say so. I think phones, bikes, cars, computers, games, glasses, medicines, prosthetics, toys, houses[0], tools, food, holidays, vehicle hire, vehicle type, plane flights, etc etc are a lot better than they were even 20, 50, and 100 years ago.
Price increases are almost always unprecedented, unless they previously went down. They are now going up, but not because of capitalism. Because of Covid spending, fuel price increases, minimum wage increases, etc etc. Macroeconomic effects (that we can debate the goodness of somewhere else), but generally ones related to government rather than business. This is though a very recent view, though. Are car prices, for the same quality of car, really better now than 30 years ago? Or has a pretty relentless competitive market for car manufacturers made cars far better value than they once were?
I don't think there have been drastic quality reductions of any kind in many areas.
"Enshitification" is a very narrow view of I think online platforms, particularly VC-backed ones starting free and looking for a sustainability too late; definitely not generalisable to "capitalism".
[0] maybe not aesthetically