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Autoenshittification. How the computer killed capitalism. – by Cory Doctorow

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Re: Autoenshittification. How the computer killed capitalism. – by Cory Doctorow

#151

Post by RajT88 »

johntiger1 wrote: post #96

I think Cory is going a little too harsh on Uber/Amazon. People use them because they provide convenience and ease-of-use, and are willing to pay for a better customer experience. If anything, 'taxi medallions' are literally the original form of feudalism and collecting rent from doing nothing.

> People use them because they provide convenience and ease-of-use, and are willing to pay for a better customer experience.

This is a worthwhile talking point. There was nothing holding back taxi companies from building an uber-like experience, just there was no incentive to do so.

Uber took advantage of that opportunity to spin up an exploitative business that did an end-run around existing regulation of that industry.

All that said - many cab companies now have uber-like apps.

I don't feel bad for the cab companies particularly; there's too many damn cars in big cities. That's a city planning problem. I do feel sorry for all the drivers out there, as it's a tough gig no matter who you're working for.

Re: Autoenshittification. How the computer killed capitalism. – by Cory Doctorow

#152

Post by sydbarrett74 »

plagiarist wrote: post #11
jmclnx wrote: post #7

>Yanis Varoufakis proposes that capitalism has died — but it wasn’t replaced by socialism. Rather, capitalism has given way to feudalism: This to me is what is really happening. A good symbol of this is income inequality and to a lesser extent, no real action on climate change. Eventually, the "lords" will be in their castles were we most people bake. The "knights" could be the tech people.

Capitalism is not dead, then. The destination of unregulated capitalism has always been feudalism. Unfortunately the lords think they will be able to survive in little mansions and that climate change will never make them miserable personally. So they have spent small amounts of capital brainwashing rubes against taking any action so they can continue raking in large amounts of capital with destructive practices.

That's why they're busy reserving a seat on a cock-rocket headed for Mars.

Re: Autoenshittification. How the computer killed capitalism. – by Cory Doctorow

#153

Post by sophacles »

paulddraper wrote: post #64
xeromal wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I like that more. Enshittification is awkward on the tongue

Enshittification rolls off the tongue perfectly. But it's profane.

Well no, it's vulgar.

Re: Autoenshittification. How the computer killed capitalism. – by Cory Doctorow

#154

Post by nebula8804 »

r2_pilot wrote: post #113
fnimick wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why I expect a basic income to come before it gets to that point. Not enough for anyone to ever save or invest in themselves, just enough money handed out from the government to be sucked right back up into the rent-seeking money machine. > Plus, if "consumers" are unable to get what they need for survival and thriving for long enough, they're going to decide (correctly) that someone has taken it from them,…

>As soon as defense of property rights is fully automated, revolution is impossible. All entities run out of deployable assets eventually.

Not if they find a way to escape to space/mars.

Re: Autoenshittification. How the computer killed capitalism. – by Cory Doctorow

#155

Post by rendang »

This guy's case is way overstated and lacking in evidence, dunno if that's from Doctorow himself or just him repeating Varoufakis. Take this absurdity:

> Better still: don't found Uber, invest in Uber options and extract value from the people who invest in Uber. Even better, invest in derivatives of Uber options and extract value from people extracting value from people investing in Uber, who extract value from drivers and riders. Go meta.

People trading options and derivatives on $UBER does not somehow drain Uber shareholders' wealth over the long term. Doctorow makes it sound as if the net proceeds from derivatives trading have grown to dwarf the profits made from businesses themselves, which is far from the case.

A better point may have been made about financialization & the growth of transaction fees (perhaps I-banks making money underwriting Uber's IPO and the like), but the financial sector is still far from replacing the whole real economy with rent-extraction.

Re: Autoenshittification. How the computer killed capitalism. – by Cory Doctorow

#156

Post by mcpackieh »

johntiger1 wrote: post #96

I think Cory is going a little too harsh on Uber/Amazon. People use them because they provide convenience and ease-of-use, and are willing to pay for a better customer experience. If anything, 'taxi medallions' are literally the original form of feudalism and collecting rent from doing nothing.

s/literally the original/a/

Re: Autoenshittification. How the computer killed capitalism. – by Cory Doctorow

#157

Post by nebula8804 »

ajuc wrote: post #88
inglor_cz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In its beginnings in the Dark Ages, medieval feudalism was pretty risky for everyone involved (though less risky than a complete societal collapse, but that is a low threshold for judgment). The nobility was expected to defend the land against invaders, who came in droves (Vikings, Magyars, Avars, Pechenegs etc.), and the incessant warfare came with a high risk of death. The peasants were mostly unarmed and any enemy…

That's not even the main risk reduced. Feudalism was invented to reduce risk of dying of starvation. Peasants were always 1 bad harvest away from starvation, they couldn't store wealth for more than a few years (as grain which goes bad). And their labor was either almost worthless (most of the year) or in shortage (during the harvest and a few other occasions). So they did "cloud farming" :) The people who had access…

Hmm fascinating! So the real "best of both worlds" here is to try and stall the march of entropy where the services we rely on "tun to shit" as you say.

One way i've been thinking of this is crowd sourced alternatives to major apps but the problem with this is the backends. Lets say you make a anti-enshittified youtube client. Well youtube is just gonna change their backend to break the app. Well now you gotta have crowdsourced efforts to constantly reverse engineer their backend.

Re: Autoenshittification. How the computer killed capitalism. – by Cory Doctorow

#158

Post by DirkH »

sameOldPpl wrote: post #14
klyrs wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a cogent argument as to why technofeudalism is either not sweeping the world, or is ultimately beneficial to its serfs?

“Light my strawman on fire for me.” Grandpa’s definitions do not need to be our definitions. People are playing some banal brinksmanship game “oooh that fall afoul of some vague mutable truth we’ve been conditioned to believe is immutable; get im fellas!” What are you all going to do to STOP the problems? Debating the diagnosis is allowing it to spread. Only real change in agency will stop it and no one seems into th…

Last I checked there is a thriving techno-political culture of decentralization and privacy rights fighting this. A lot of people are in fact doing a lot. Don't worry kiddo! The adults are working on it even if it seems futile.

FYI it isn't a strawman to ask whether you have a cogent argument for why technofeudalism isn't happening.

You asserted the proposition that technofeudalism isn't a thing (strongly implied) The respondent didn't construct a superficially similar proposition (I.e. a strawman) and simply asked what support you have for your proposition.

A strawman would have been like if someone argued against your proposition that "But the Snowden leaks showed we live in a surveillance state!" This is a Strawman because it constructs a superficially similar position to "technofeudalism is a thing" without actually at all arguing against the position that technofeudalism is not a thing.

Re: Autoenshittification. How the computer killed capitalism. – by Cory Doctorow

#159

Post by MisterTea »

dragontamer wrote: post #18
blfr wrote: post #12

While I dislike the elecronification trend, cars are definitely better than they were 30-40 years ago, in a completely different league when it comes to reliability. Plenty of people also like the touchscreens or seemingly superflous features like Tesla's dog mode. Not gearheads but many normies genuinely do. To the extent that cars did get worse, it was mostly to meet stringent emissions regulations, not computers o…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_r5UJrxcck Malibu vs Bel Air crash test. You better believe that modern cars are better, its incredible how _BAD_ cars were before we cared about safety. And that's just safety. Today's cars have better MPG, go faster, have more power, easier to maintain, consistently hit 150,000 miles, etc. etc.

> Malibu vs Bel Air crash test.

Bel Air? 1955? We can go well into the 90's with many cars which were little more than sheet metal shells on a frame. My oldest friend was killed in his '89 Nissan sentra after he was hit from behind by a wreckless driver sending the little tin foil box into a pole and tree shredding it into a pile of scrap metal along with him.

> consistently hit 150,000 miles

Tell that to Merc 300D's. But aside from anomalies drive-line reliability greatly improved int he 90's after we ditched carbs and early fuel injection. My 1995 tahoe had 175k on the clock when sold and only needed a transfer case rebuild after my mother shifted it while moving (broke the fork and was stuck in 4hi). After the awful demise of my friend I sold my '96 civic (4th owner) with over 300k on the odo, it broke at 300 and I believe it was around 350-360 when I sold it. My 2004 Jeep Libery made it to 220k before it started falling apart and sold it to a guy who ran it for another few years (the 3.7 v6 in them were crap too).

> easier to maintain, consistently hit 150,000 miles, etc. etc.

Back in March my friend woke up to find that his less than 2 month old 2023 Kia Sportage hybrid stone dead in his driveway. Dealer dropped off a 15 year old loaner and took 40 days to find and fix the problem. They told him it was a "bad wiring harness". Super easy maintenance, eh?

> go faster, have more power,

The amount of morons who think they are the king of the road has massively increased thanks to COVID and the last thing we need is to empower these morons with faster piles of metal.

Re: Autoenshittification. How the computer killed capitalism. – by Cory Doctorow

#160

Post by topaz0 »

MrOwnPut wrote: post #145
topaz0 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have not understood what I said. I'm not talking about unappealing features of the idealized version of capitalism that GP is lionizing. I'm talking about how capitalism as described brings about the conditions that undermine free competition, by its nature. You're talking about it as though we can just agree as a society "we're doing free competition now" and that's that. Capitalists won't agree to this -- every…

I'm essentially asking you what system you are proposing.

I'm not sure what gave you the impression that I was proposing something in my comments.
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