Comment by Timon3
4 days ago
That's a very simplistic take because it assumes full transparency for all consumers - all while advertising, one of the biggest industries in our society, explicitly allows companies to turn the money they make from consumer-hostile behavior into additional reach, and even worse: all while large companies and VCs keep buying up pro-consumer businesses and enshittifying them.
Trust me, the simplistic take is "All company's are bad, and have ill intent"
Their take is simplistic, but yours is worse.
Some companies have good intent. Public benefit corporations are a thing. They aren't really relevant, because unscrupulous companies outcompete them.
Your assertion that pro-consumer companies would outcompete unscrupulous ones depends on consumers and regulators holding them accountable. So why are you arguing against being suspicious of companies?
Obviously the best strategy for companies is to appear to be pro-consumer, but "cheat" (meaning price fixing but also things like advertising and buying up competitors) as much as possible. In that context, "all companies are anti-consumer" is a decent shorthand for "you should assume every company is anti-consumer because the regulatory environment favors it, even if there are exceptions."