A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

Yeah it feels like people forgot about the Sony Rootkit DRM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...) that ended up exploited by malware.

> They are disloyal leeches.

Consumers are mercenary, as are companies, and that’s the rational way to be in an economy of scale, where loyalty is “brand loyalty”. If consumers aren’t loyal, it’s a failure of the company’s marketing.

"The money thrown into the convenience economy has also created a crowded marketplace. Couch potatoes can choose between Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus and others, and a glut of ultrafast delivery and takeout services; ride-seekers can switch between Uber, Lyft and Bolt. "

Home video and taxi-cab service are very different sectors.

Uber has engaged in some pretty "creative" (i.e. unethical) business tactics to muscle their way into the taxi industry while avoiding both regulations and the payment of decent wages. They moved fast, but it was only a matter of time before government regulators (and their own reputation) caught up to them. Transportation is, indeed, something that's going to go back up in price in the short-term, if only because Uber and the Uber-wannabe's were using a business model that was never sustainable. I'd expect considerable contraction of this market as multiple companies fight each other for dwindling profits.

Home streaming, on the other hand, is simply coming off of a pandemic boom. When people were stuck at home, surprise surprise, they watched a lot of TV. Demand will correct to no less than what it was a couple years ago. The problems streaming providers face are entirely self inflicted. e.g. Fragmentation. It's going to remain hard for any single streamer to make as much as Netflix did when Netflix was pretty much the only streamer. Expecting consumers to pay five different companies on a monthly basis for what basically amounts to "channels" is not a delusion likely to persist much longer. We might see cable-TV style aggregation of streaming services take over, enabling users to pay a single monthly bill for all their streaming needs. Unlike transportation, there are free alternatives to streaming (i.e. piracy) that consumers will turn to in increasing numbers if streaming providers stay on their current course. This alone dictates that streaming must become more convenient in the near future, not less so. Showing ads on a service that isn't free is outright suicidal.

I was going to say, streaming with “gig economy” ride sharing are completely different.

Streaming really has no right to not be “convenient”. The only reason it’s reverting to inconvenient is because of beaurocracy and aggressive licensing and copyright enforcement. One can argue that it costs money to make movies and producers need to get that money back, but even older movies which have already been released and made huge profits are no longer available or available on different platforms. Then there is region locking and overlooked movies which are flat-out unavailable. Because of all this, there is widespread piracy, and afaik if you have a good pirate setup streaming is still very convenient.

On the other hand, the convenience and low price of ride-sharing and delivery apps was unsustainable, temporary, and didn’t even really exist in the first place. When you get an Uber it costs like $10 for a 10-minute ride on a good day, and the delivery fees are often as much as the cost of your meal itself. Yet Uber doesn’t even make profit (I don’t know how that works and they’re not bankrupt, they have external funding but are allegedly losing money every year on their actual services). You can’t pirate a free ride or meal.