The whole idea of enshittification is that someone makes a high-quality app (or whatever), outcompetes all other entrants, and locks down the market. Then, having acquired pricing power, they can raise prices or, more often (as these tools aren't 'priced' from the perspective of the consumer, but rather indirectly funded e.g. through ads) lower the quality of the product. The steps in this chain are not inherent to 'making products', they emerge entirely from the confines and incentives of our market-based economy.
And it's not just "centrally planned economies" that avoid this. We see evidence from historical modes of production like artisinal handicraft. Despite there not being a free market of producers (as guilds generally possessed legally-enforced monopolies over saleable production) the general quality of goods thereby produced did not generally trend downwards. Indeed, we can see from the sources that in cases where quality was known to have dropped, popular backlash led to interventions, e.g. the various Parisian bread laws, or hallmarking regulations for goldsmiths. Obviously, similar mechanisms exist today in the form of governmental regulations, but the problem with free market economies is that they produce actors both incentivized and empowered to hamstring the government, capture regulators, and ultimately undermine that self-same free market, to their own benefit.
This feels to me like a false dichotomy. The only alternative to the current way of doing things isn't a planned command economy, no matter what "libertarians" or tankies might argue.
Anything other then capitalism with slightly more regulation is just going from the US to Germany. Great, but they have software updates on cars too.
If you want to change anything more fundamental, you are going to have to do a planned economy.
At best you can say, maybe could be slightly better Germany by having a better political process or something. But even then, software updates in your car are going to be a reality because it solves are problem for manufactures, saves consumers lots of time in many cases and generally the positives outway the negatives.
I bet you 100% that in any planned economy OTA updates would still happen.
At best we can argue for some better practice about OTA Updates in regards to security and functionality. Maybe forcing manufactures to have a 'security only' feed an a 'feature feed'.
> I bet you 100% that in any planned economy OTA updates would still happen.
How so? In a democratically planned economy, we would expect that economic decisions considered by the majority of the population to be unwise/upsetting/etc. would not take place. Yes, many/most decisions would probably happen 'behind the scenes', according to the delegated authority of smaller committees or individual officials, but that's only so long as those decisions don't cause bad results for the broader populace.
More broadly, how exactly would enshittification take place in an economy not based around market principles? The whole idea is that someone makes a high-quality app (or whatever), outcompetes all other entrants, and locks down the market. Then, having acquired pricing power, they can raise prices or, more often (as these tools aren't 'priced' from the perspective of the consumer, but rather indirectly funded e.g. through ads) lower the quality of the product. These steps are not intrinsic to reality, they emerge entirely from the confines of our market-based economy.
And yes, you can argue that in an "ideal market" they wouldn't happen, but a truism of modern economics is that "sufficiently free markets" produce actors with the power and desire to capture/destroy said free market.
Pasting a bit from another comment...
The whole idea of enshittification is that someone makes a high-quality app (or whatever), outcompetes all other entrants, and locks down the market. Then, having acquired pricing power, they can raise prices or, more often (as these tools aren't 'priced' from the perspective of the consumer, but rather indirectly funded e.g. through ads) lower the quality of the product. The steps in this chain are not inherent to 'making products', they emerge entirely from the confines and incentives of our market-based economy.
And it's not just "centrally planned economies" that avoid this. We see evidence from historical modes of production like artisinal handicraft. Despite there not being a free market of producers (as guilds generally possessed legally-enforced monopolies over saleable production) the general quality of goods thereby produced did not generally trend downwards. Indeed, we can see from the sources that in cases where quality was known to have dropped, popular backlash led to interventions, e.g. the various Parisian bread laws, or hallmarking regulations for goldsmiths. Obviously, similar mechanisms exist today in the form of governmental regulations, but the problem with free market economies is that they produce actors both incentivized and empowered to hamstring the government, capture regulators, and ultimately undermine that self-same free market, to their own benefit.
This feels to me like a false dichotomy. The only alternative to the current way of doing things isn't a planned command economy, no matter what "libertarians" or tankies might argue.
Then explain how it would work exactly.
Anything other then capitalism with slightly more regulation is just going from the US to Germany. Great, but they have software updates on cars too.
If you want to change anything more fundamental, you are going to have to do a planned economy.
At best you can say, maybe could be slightly better Germany by having a better political process or something. But even then, software updates in your car are going to be a reality because it solves are problem for manufactures, saves consumers lots of time in many cases and generally the positives outway the negatives.
I bet you 100% that in any planned economy OTA updates would still happen.
At best we can argue for some better practice about OTA Updates in regards to security and functionality. Maybe forcing manufactures to have a 'security only' feed an a 'feature feed'.
> I bet you 100% that in any planned economy OTA updates would still happen.
How so? In a democratically planned economy, we would expect that economic decisions considered by the majority of the population to be unwise/upsetting/etc. would not take place. Yes, many/most decisions would probably happen 'behind the scenes', according to the delegated authority of smaller committees or individual officials, but that's only so long as those decisions don't cause bad results for the broader populace.
More broadly, how exactly would enshittification take place in an economy not based around market principles? The whole idea is that someone makes a high-quality app (or whatever), outcompetes all other entrants, and locks down the market. Then, having acquired pricing power, they can raise prices or, more often (as these tools aren't 'priced' from the perspective of the consumer, but rather indirectly funded e.g. through ads) lower the quality of the product. These steps are not intrinsic to reality, they emerge entirely from the confines of our market-based economy.
And yes, you can argue that in an "ideal market" they wouldn't happen, but a truism of modern economics is that "sufficiently free markets" produce actors with the power and desire to capture/destroy said free market.