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Cory Doctorow’s identification of “enshittification” is a valid and cogent examination of how platforms go to die, and when abstracted, how markets, empires, and other middlemen in general go to shit and either collapse or become niche, or capture the market and become permanently shitty.
It occurs to me now that one of the great strengths of American libertarian-capitalism, as it was in the 20th century, was an environment competitive enough to reduce the incentives and pressures to enshittify, primarily by the freedom to open a truly competitive business. The old could adapt and become competitive once more, but in doing so, they’d lose the benefits of enshittification; great for the customer, but hidden from execs on the bottom line.
But larger organs of power and money have both adapted, the way evolving systems tend to do, and have found ways to capture market forces and regulatory oversight, and entrench their enshittification without fear of ever being unseated. Late stage (enshittified) capitalism and late stage democracy are feeling their oats.
Most noticeably, in my opinion, was the way the American power-sliding-leftward culture captured academia and media, which used to be the oversight mechanisms keeping a free people educated and informed about the agglomerating nature of socialism and fascism. Now, all problems in society are laid at the feet of capitalism and free markets without examination of other possible governmental or societal causes. Any power shifts to the left are framed as “reforms,” and power shifts to the right are framed as “corruption” and “fascism.”
But that’s just leftism, not enshittification, you may (rightly) point out. Ah, but the fiscal effects: taxes must increase because budgets must increase. Why? Solving problems is no longer the goal of the government; now, issues must be managed. Societal woes must be serviced by specific groups of unionized government employees. Union contracts have to be renegotiated because wages have to increase with inflation and/or remain a multiple of the minimum wage. Training programs have to be run during working hours to avoid systemic oppression affecting intersectionally underprivileged clients. Multisyllabic words have to be repurposed to adequately and loquaciously describe innovative and ever more lucrative forms of enshittification.
This is a problem. What are some solutions?
Producers would like to get the most money for the least effort. Thus, they abuse lock-in and network effects to squeeze their consumers, converging on a minimum viable product. Okay, neat.
In your analogy, the government is the producer. It’s also the product, via its services, and the money, via kickbacks and sinecures. This is incoherent because shittification is not about self-licking ice cream cones. It’s about market capture, and markets have never been a good description of governments.
What is the equivalent of creating a new firm? And how exactly was a free, socialist-hating media supposed to enshrine it? Americans didn’t stay in America because academics were willing to denounce Hitler and Stalin. They stayed because dictators are bad for business. They stayed, voted in leftists and rightists, and won the Cold War.
American socialism was strongest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Same for fascism. They rose and fell in the time of this amazing free enterprise, because it turns out your enemies get to use the pulpit, too.
You’re looking for reasons to caricature your enemies. This theory isn’t a very good one.
The analogy of the OP seems apt.
Companies and bureaucracies tend (over time) to increase their own power at the expense of the people they nominally serve. This could take the form of higher prices or higher taxes.
The only thing that keeps the system working is competition. But when regulatory capture locks out competition, things will become enshittified. The same thing has happened in states that have transitioned from somewhat robust democracies into one-party states. California comes to mind here.
This is of course not limited to liberalism. A conservative one party state could have the same effect.
But parties aren’t competing to provide the same good. Outside of the smallest offices, there’s all this baggage of policy planks and national networks.
The analogy to buying from a different company isn’t voting differently. It’s moving to a country with similar politics. Possible, but a high bar which I wouldn’t expect to decide the issue.
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