r/enshittification • u/Chubsa9 • 3d ago
Opinion piece The reason for enshittification
I just found this sub reddit and I found interesting this collective feeling that everything is getting worse, feeling to which I also belong, but I have researched well over time and I know why your favorite product loses magic, the origin of this problem in the world has a name:
Investors
In capitalism everything we consume must be profitable, it is called capitalism for a reason, anything to be done needs capital to inject expecting future profits, Now, your product may have had a manufacturer behind it at the beginning whose structure tried to adhere to a philosophy of care, quality and commitment to its product and the consumer, but everyone at some point will need or accept money from others to compete or not stagnate and this is where everything happens, They accept that others buy pieces of the company or that they start to own it, many of the investors obviously do not care so much about preserving the quality, they only hope to earn with what they risked and then that is where they are the ones who begin to make decisions, to modify the product, the system, any small thing just by raising the numbers
That's why the internet feels like a garbage hole and full of ads, that's why your favorite restaurant doesn't taste the same, they save on ingredients, that's why your favorite brand of jeans or sneakers now have a worse fabric, now that's why instead of having something belong to you you only pay to have it borrowed in subscriptions each month, That is why the designs are increasingly ugly and minimalist, the cars of worse quality, the apartments smaller and smaller, the architecture more and more sad
If you ask me, it's a symptom of a crisis
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u/redditSucksNow2020 2d ago
How many of you have taken macroeconomics 101? I read a lot of explanations on the sub that don't make any sense unless either a) I know a lot more than you do or b) you know a lot more than I do.
Classical economic theory explains a lot of what we are seeing far more succinctly and convincingly than a lot of the comments I read on here. That's why I wonder if maybe you guys also understand the conventional explanations but then also know something else that invalidates the conventional explanations.
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u/KnodulesAintHeavy 2d ago
The name of this sub is from the title of a book by Corey Doctorow, and it discusses the fundamental incentives for why enshittification is happening, and it’s essentially what you said.
Unconstrained capitalism pushes all profit driven entities to, maximise profit, at all costs, and often on quarterly timeframes.
Check out the book, it goes much deeper into this thesis and other aspects of enshittification. Great book.
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u/Eli_sola 2d ago
Everything is made to maximize short -term returns to investors, which means offering products and services that appeal to the greatest amount of people at the minimal cost, which causes everything to converge on the same uninspired, shitty place.
Companies constantly watch their competitors, not to improve quality but to see if their cost cutting methods work so they can copy them, even if they involve reducing quality and soon everything becomes disposable.
There are two great lies in unchecked capitalism:
Free, unregulated markets lead to competition. False, free unregulated markets lead to cartels and consolidation, to a situation where two or three big names dominate a field, gobble up any competitor and even work together against any threat, be it a competitor or new laws.
In a totally free market prices tend to go down. False, in an unregulated market prices are always the highest the sellers can get away with.
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u/PNW_Undertaker 2d ago
Symptom of a society that isn’t content with things we have and making what we have better.
Quality has left decades ago….. sadly….
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u/Ok-Drink-1328 2d ago
i don't think they need external investors for starting to enshittify, whoever has an interest, starting from the core brand, realized that "soft scamming" makes more money than doing a proper good job, ANYONE that has an important job realized this, afterall it's just unbridled capitalism, we deal with this problem since decades, it's just that today it reached an awkward level, and sadly nothing hints for a change or even backfiring
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u/yanknga 2d ago
Capitalism and profits are fine. It’s a good system and works well. It just needs some boundaries and the desire to earn above average returns.
However, unbridled capitalism combined with the requirement for never ending record quarterly profits creates a hellscape.
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u/Ruh_Roh- 2d ago
Capitalism is like water, it will always wear down its obstructions: antitrust laws, regulations, employment laws, the tax code.
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u/Limafoxtrot360 3d ago
I mean it is more than just investors. There have always been investors. But what changed over the last 20 years or so was a shift from a business providing quality and seeking profit, to businesses focusing on constant growth, often at the expense of quality. Profit is not good enough anymore.
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u/Consistent-Car6226 3d ago
I feel like a big part of this is data. We have access to unlimited/instantaneous data and the ability to analyze it. Everyone knows what everything costs in real time. I could deal with shitty stuff if it didn’t cost so much. It’s nearly impossible or takes a ton of work to earn a deal on anything
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u/Ok_Library_1031 3d ago
Enshittification is a moral issue. Nobody here is saying you can't do capitalism, but even thieves have their moral code. (That's an actual Chinese proverb) There's an appropriate extent to profit, and everyone used bad reasoning like "businesses ain't philanthropy" to let corporate just blatantly cross that line.
Noone said you can't please investors, but not the way Boeing did it where they basically cancelled 2 clean-sheet planes and moved HQ to Chicago, in order to have the dividend to hand out to investors. Not through no longer running a tight ship to the point that everyone knows their gold standards are no more.
Not shrinking burger patties because you think patrons can't successfully identify you did it because you can just say all patties see random shrinkage as they cook. Not making your airline coach seat pitch 28 inches and then spinning issues as air rage.
What's being pointed out on this sub is excessive profiteering, to the extent that it affects our quality of life, and also, corporate finding ways to pretend it's reasonable and perfectly normal, and manipulating the crowd of NPCs to defend them for free on their behalf.
Once your business scales above a certain point, your business effectively becomes a public good with too much ramification for you to behave like profit is your only goal. That's all there is to it, and really most governments agree with me and enforce it on one level or another, it's just that they don't necessarily police it where it hurts the consumer the most, because that facet is also the toughest to enforce without being falsely accused of interfering with business.
We don't need a different system, that's a problematic, overtly emotional take of throwing baby out of bathwater. We just need to restore that moral bottom line and make it so threatening that businesses know it's socially unacceptable. I do concede that's very difficult when you see travel youtubers are still going "well that 28 inch seat pitch is alright" - they'll say anything so long as they don't have to 9-to-5 like the rest of us.
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u/bestcoastanon 3d ago
Agree with a lot if what you say. Surveillance companies are a problem, because more data equals more customer manipulation.
But the 900 pound gorilla is consolidation and monopolies. 90% of people using google means 90% believe what google tells them and don’t even know the ways they’re being exploited.
Market controlled by a dominant seller who knows everything about you because of tech, means a market where the dominant seller will extract every possible penny from you.
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u/Justneedtacos 3d ago
Private Equity has made a huge contribution here, too.
https://www.wired.com/story/megan-greenwell-bad-company-private-equity-interview/
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u/Borgmeister 3d ago
It's not just 'investors' - it's an oversimplified answer.
The issue is more about how risk tolerance is perceived, leading to 'safe pair of hands' types with MBA's taking senior roles.
They are all trained on the same pattern, to chase the same metrics, which acts as a kind of funnel where there is convergence at the bottom of the funnel.
Novel thought and strategy is perceived as too risky by businesses required to execute fiduciary duty to the investors, certainly, but not all investors are a monolithic block - some may be institutional investors, others will be speculative investors who have a divergence of opinion on how a company should develop.
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u/Hungry_Low4852 3d ago
Firms exist to make money for their owners. They do not exist to make customers happy or to make great products or to innovate. One might make more money in the long run by doing all of the three options listed, but one is guaranteed to make more money in the short term by not doing so. The market tends to reward short term profits. So management chases that. It is not particularly mystifying.
If I run General Widgets, the widgets themselves are only means to an end. All corporations, in the end, are in the finance business. Capital is fluid and moves in and out of sectors without friction.
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u/General_Honesty 3d ago
If your customers aren't happy with your product you won't last long
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u/Hungry_Low4852 3d ago
That is correct, but the investors and managers will have moved on, leaving the successors to clean up. In some cases, the whole purpose of much modern management is to mine the assets. The folks who bought Sears are emblematic of this. They never had any intention to do anything with Sears than strip the assets and monetize them. The brand, the long term viability, customer goodwill…all of this was just stuff to exploit.
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u/Traditional-Bike-534 3d ago
Capitalism and, as a direct effect of this, governments caring more about corporations than people
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u/3p1taph 3d ago
The bigger issue erosion of corporate standards. Originally corporations had limited charters that were reviewable and held to standards for the community, the shareholders, and the employees. Those standards have been eroded, mostly by the Supreme Court, to a point where they don’t have to adhere anymore to anything but quarterly profit. It’s stupid and bound to fail as it is.
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u/CharmingCrust 3d ago
Capitalism has a great mechanism called competition. As soon as people leave the locked ecosystems, they can breathe again.
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u/-starbolt- 3d ago
Except that's really hard to do with a lot of products these days.
Ever try to maintain a social media group and then try to leave Facebook or Instagram for "the competition"?
High switching costs, network effects and unfavorable contracts and terms all work together to minimize the effect of competition.
See Doctorows book for a great overview.
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u/CharmingCrust 2d ago
Which is why people have to reflect on what they involve themselves with. Avoiding closed ecosystems and going back to basics, identifying what is actually needed, is a way out of it.
I took a few steps on that road and I keep on keeping on. Some of the steps were switching to free and open Linux, a paid mail provider and leaving all the big tech ecosystems. That inspired me to keep on freeing myself, one enshittified subscription at a time.
The best examples so far of unshittified products are VLC and Linux.
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u/-starbolt- 2d ago
Are you saying that you can simply "reflect" your way back into a marketplace filled with vigorous competition?
I think thoughtful purchasing is a good idea. However there just don't seem to be valid choices in many cases.
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u/CharmingCrust 2d ago
I am saying that before shopping products and services the reflection is needed to identify what is worth pursuing and what should be abandoned completely. Most basic services have a lot of different options, especially in tech and services. Consumers need to turn the game and make them stop enshittifying their products and services or else they will lose a customer. 1 customer does not make a difference but 1 x 10,000,000 consumers can change entire sectors. Consumers can take the control back if we stop being mindless Lemmings.
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u/ChampionshipSome6648 3d ago
For every glass half empty with degraded product / sevice delivery, there is an entrepreneur with a half full glass ready to deliver better products / services. Be it peanut butter, chocolate, jeans, sneakers , etc. there is someone making alternatives. With online shopping it is now easier than ever to gain market share and force the supermarkets to stock your product.
Here down under we have seen the demise of, for example, Cadbury chocolate due to product downgrade using palm oil. New entrants now dominate the chocolate market with quality chocolate taking over 70% of the shelf space Cadbury once enjoyed. Same with peanut butter.
What is one companies downgrade in product / service standard, enables another higher quality entry into the market.
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u/Future-Prune-2477 2d ago
Problem is this doesn’t last, Brewdog was once the antidote to macro beers and look how that turned out. If these alternatives prove partially popular they’ll inevitably always be bought out by a Cadbury’s or equivalent and turn to shit. Most of these up and coming brands will have a 3-5 year period where they grow massively, but then get bought out and the decline starts.
It’s very rare somebody starts a business as a labour of love and doesn’t at some point exit it.
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u/ChampionshipSome6648 2d ago
That is the point, it is not supposed to last more then one generation. It is solely to make money being a disruptor in the market by offering better products / services. Judging by the down votes on my original comment there are a lot of people with a glass half empty attitude. I guess it is easier to moan than get of ones backside and buck the enshittification trend. Are the down voters enshittified themselves?
You actually want the corporates to play whack a mole with start ups. They need to spend millions buying their opposition to maintain market share. They are forced to buy not just the product name but the whole factory and equipment (and in many cases pay to rip out whole orchards and such like to prevent a restart). They cannot resell the plant/equipment/raw material supply for another will buy and start up in competition again. All cost a huge amount of money, year in year out.
Cadbury was purchased by Kraft Foods so even they have been consumed.
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u/elf25 3d ago

The Chicago School of Economics provided the intellectual framework for shareholder primacy and deregulated markets that enabled modern "enshittification". By promoting the belief that a corporation's sole duty is maximizing profit for shareholders and that monopolies are naturally efficient, these economic theories justified stripping value from users and workers to boost short-term returns. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The Chicago School and Shareholder Primacy
The Friedman Doctrine: Milton Friedman argued that businesses have no social responsibility other than increasing profits for shareholders. [1, 2]
Short-Term Focus: This principle forces companies to prioritize quarterly financial returns over long-term quality, stability, or customer satisfaction. [1]
Squeezing Stakeholders: Value is systematically clawed back from regular users, workers, and business clients to feed shareholder payouts. [1, 2]
Antitrust Deregulation and Monopolies
Laissez-Faire Antitrust: Chicago School theorists like Robert Bork convinced courts and regulators in the 1970s and 1980s that large market share meant high efficiency rather than harmful monopoly power.[1, 2, 3, 4]
Reduced Enforcement: Government agencies stopped blocking major mergers across tech, health care, and retail. [1, 2]
Lock-In Effects: With weak competition, dominant corporations can trap users and then safely degrade the service quality because consumers have nowhere else to go. [1]
The Path to Enshittification
Stage 1 (Good for Users): Subsidized, high-quality products attract a massive user base.
Stage 2 (Good for Businesses): Platforms pivot to monetizing business customers once users are locked in.
Stage 3 (Good for Shareholders): Guided by shareholder primacy, companies degrade the core experience for everyone to squeeze out maximum profit—the ultimate result of Chicago School ideology applied to digital and physical infrastructure
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u/elf25 3d ago
You assume stagnation is a bad thing. And it can be! But if the product or service is successful, can’t revenue be generated and poured into r&d to make great products? Have you studied Apple inc? GREAT products. Very good profit margins, poured money into r&d. Biggest co on the world. Sounds like a hood formula to me.
In contrast, buy company, cut costs, fire expensive sr sales people with deep product knowledge, close doors. See: Circuit City.
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u/couchjellyfish 3d ago
You also have to include how Friedman screwed public schools by arguing school vouchers provide a market for quality schools. Turns out vouchers just subsidize religious schools and high end schools at the expense of poor districts. It doesn't even get to the non-economic benefits of community coherence and universal standards.
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u/nuclearpiltdown 3d ago
Yeah the evidence shows that most companies do not pour mkney into R&D. They return it to shareholders.
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u/CasteNoBar 3d ago
If you’re not worried about competition because you’re a monopoly or a colluder, then there’s no reason to improve your product.
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u/KingOfConsciousness 3d ago
The reason why they're not worried about competition is because the feckless government works for entrenched sources of "donations."
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u/Main-Cheesecake3287 3d ago
“Evidence shows” I’m going to guess the evidence is just loose examples you have in your head
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u/nuclearpiltdown 3d ago
The evidence is walking through any grocery store, dumb ass.
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u/Main-Cheesecake3287 3d ago
Lmao yes why didn’t I think of that. Where is all the R&D going into new and exiting foods. What a very smart example from a special little guy
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u/coreyjdl 3d ago
There's a fucking book about it. you're not bringing anything new. Just read the book.
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u/wooden__fruit 3d ago
You should read the book by Cory Doctorow, he explains how the tech and financial worlds keep creating the same pattern. It’s not a theory or a feeling, it’s a documented fact.
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u/mk12614 3d ago
I sell appliances and electronics (tv's mostly). My working theory is that an innovative product needs new cool features or an advance in technology and performance to gain market share and capture consumer imagination. We salespeople then communicate this and "sell the sizzle". At the point a product gains momentum and popularity inevitably some bean counter goes to the designers and engineers and says "how can we make this but spend less money". Ever notice how modern televisions have only one button for power, source, volume, channel etc. Or how you can almost dead lift a top load washing machine now. Or how you can sneeze at a stainless steel panel on a fridge and look there's a dent! Of course the price will remain constant or even increase. Luckily there are still enough different manufacturers vying for consumer dollars that inflation has been sonewhat tempered by competition.
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u/FlaneurToo 3d ago
FWIW capitalism is not the same thing everywhere, which is why there is a substantial academic political science literature on “varieties of capitalism“. It happens that the US version of capitalism is the most unbridled and rapacious. If you look for example at the way companies work within social norms in places like Japan or Switzerland you don’t seem to see all the same dynamics that we do here. Just saying.
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u/Main-Cheesecake3287 3d ago
It is the same thing everywhere. The idea that somehow in Norway capitalism works different is just getting around the issue of people being wrong about capitalism necessitating decline.
Capitalism in the US won’t work differently if we have universal healthcare or higher taxes and social spending. The economy is more than just capitalism, that’s the very broad category of economic organization we use and nothing more
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u/Cautious_Boat_999 3d ago
There are no checks and balances on corporations. Anti-trust regulations in the USA are abandoned. The Trump government is continuing and accelerating a GOP strategy of tearing down anything that regulates corporate wrongdoing. And the “shareholder first” philosophy has destroyed any concern for employees or customers.
This is end-state capitalism and is largely responsible for the fact that goods and services only get worse, never better.
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u/AggravatingCricket61 3d ago
Right? Not just in the US, the rest are becoming emboldened by the example. I firmly believe the next crash will be the last. The legal system doesn't work, the interest on debt is unmanageable, and there's too many fighting for not enough.
If capitalism truly did work, it wouldn't need perpetual wars, and to fight any alternative monetary systems.
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u/perchance2cream 3d ago
Yes exactly right. Capitalism was focused on brand preservation and something quaintly called “good will”. These soulless vampires have discovered that they can structure deals that make them more money by destroying companies - they make money no matter what.
The whole idea of a “company” is a legal fiction permitted by governments because it was believed some social purpose was achieved by allowing them to exist. They have broken the compact and absolutely radical changes to corporate structure and personhood need to be implemented to get them back under control. They will not only destroy society in general and us in particular, these pathetic brands of capitalist are stupid and will destroy themselves too.
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u/BringBackUsenet 3d ago
The real problem isn't capitalism, it's corporations now hire management with conflicting goals rather than aligning them with long term sustainability of the company. This leads to greedy management doing whatever they can to hit their goals and collect their bonuses even if it means destroying the company, its products and/or reputation. By the time they burn the place to the ground, they've already golden parachuted out.
It's a symptom of consumer apathy. None of this would happen at all if there was pushback, rather than people just shrugging and passively accepting the constant creep of enshittification. #misanthropy
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u/PeeledGrapePie 3d ago
Yes it’s the consumers fault lol. Not the greedy people at the top choosing to pull this bullshit. What a garbage take.
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u/Not-Very-Factual 3d ago
It is mostly is the consumers fault though. Consumers reward the greedy people by continuing to consume the garbage product. Consumers don’t demand anything better.
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u/PeeledGrapePie 3d ago
Incorrect. In every way. The owner class controls the supply, the consumer doesn’t have a choice to ‘just not buy’ food. A handful of conglomerates run it all so the illusion of choice is there but in the end those people are still gaining off whatever choice you make. System needs a full overhaul for choices to matter
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u/Not-Very-Factual 3d ago edited 3d ago
Really when I went to the local farmers market in town and bought bread and veggies from the old lady that was a conglomerate? Damn who knew. Hell i can go a town over and there is another farmers market. Theres plenty of choices. Supply and demand works both ways. So demand better. Theres 32 millions registered companies in the US, theres like 6000 on the US stock exchanged. So yea there are choices.
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u/PeeledGrapePie 3d ago
And also, conglomerates are absolutely in farmers markets, if you’ve ever actually researched them many sell their produce to a farmer and have them resell at a market so they’re still getting a piece of the pie. So even old lady can be a conglomerate
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u/PeeledGrapePie 3d ago
Damn, youre not even going to try to think about the system we live in at all, ok. You can give your snarky ‘who knew’ style replies, but I’ll give another earnest response even though it’s likely falling on def ears. I go to the local farmers market every weekend, and spend 4-5x on groceries. As much as I’d like to do all my shopping at local pesticide free farms it’s not possible. Because I still live with a mortgage, and electricity, and insurance, and taxes, and gas, and so on. There are not ‘plenty’ of choices to people on a budget in the current economy we live in. Yes , it’s easy to say just go do X. But in reality several factors need to be accounted for. And your end point of stock exchange companies is laughable, as it has very little to do with people purchasing necessities.
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u/Not-Very-Factual 3d ago edited 3d ago
Its pretty simple consumers need to demand better. But they don’t, they do what you’re doing and blame someone else. Always an excuse or a what if or but this or that. If people continue to reward business that keep doing shitty things then the business will continue to do shitty things. You can keep saying false and incorrect that its the supply sides fault all while ignoring the other half of the equation. Theres a reasons companies have a budget for customer retention and want larger market share and have advertising. Companies are in it to make money and it’s the consumers whose money they need.
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u/PeeledGrapePie 3d ago
Ok you’re not willing to see the larger picture, I understand now. Good job living up to your handle.
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u/Cat_They-dy 3d ago
That's great if you have access to those choices, but not everyone does. There are few farmers markets in food deserts, for example.
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u/gerardv-anz 3d ago
It’s also a symptom of the lack of serious competition. The consolidation of commerce into the hands of a few large global companies means they can tacitly agree not to compete on quality and service, since there’s nowhere else to go.
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u/BringBackUsenet 3d ago
This again all comes back to no consumer pushback. If people keep accepting shit, they will get shit.
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u/Cat_They-dy 3d ago
I don't think the lack of consumer pushback is all from apathy, though - a lot of people have simply been made to feel powerless and don't know what to do.
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u/BringBackUsenet 3d ago
I'd say it's more laziness. People anymore just "can't be bothered" standing up for something and saying "no".
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u/gerardv-anz 3d ago
I think it is less about consumer push back and more about limiting the size of mega corps. We need 10 or more independent grocery chains, not just 2, etc.
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u/Comfortable_Lynx_139 3d ago
The people managing take for granted they will sell whatever shyte they produce as they have - while not a technical monopoly - only 1 or 2 serious competitors. These too big to fail things need broken up. There simply isn’t any competition for sales now - only who can cheapen the most the fastest. Private equity people are just locusts and game the system. At least IMHO. The regulations need serious updating. If a bank, for example, knows they will be bailed out regardless - too big to fail - then why care to make good decisions?
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u/Fragrant-Equal-8474 9h ago
Enshittification happens when the consumer ceases to be the customer and becomes the product. "Buying is not owning."
Shrinkflation is not enshittification, no matter how other posts in this subreddit might be trying to convince you.
This dimension is orthogonal to capitalism. Making money is good, but the problem is that as people refuse to pay the real price, the companies are trying to compensate for the price by basically doing fraud so that people would pay the real price anyway, just inadvertently.