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balioc:

One of the most common libertarian-adjacent anti-government arguments - or, uh, argument-like gestures (non-derogatory) - is: Boy, the DMV sure does suck! Or, if you prefer, Reagan’s old line about hearing that someone is from the government and here to help. The government is bad at doing things, its works are expensive and inefficient, everything it touches turns to shit. Sensible people will want to avoid engaging with it, and avoid sinking resources into it, as much as possible.

And there are obviously elements of truth to this, if you’re discoursing in good faith, although it’s just as obvious that the government regularly works miracles that go unappreciated because they get immediately folded into the status quo.

There has been a lot of talk, of late, about the growing popularity of socialism, and the way that all the kids treat “capitalism” as a dirty word, and the general contempt for private enterprise, etc. etc. Much of that talk has come from people who regard this as very bad and want to put a stop to it.

I respectfully submit: a large part of what’s going on is, well, enshittification. It’s increasingly noticeable that all the businesses with whom you interact are focused on extracting money from you in exchange for as little as possible. Quality sucks across the board. Customer service sucks. Shrinkflation, planned obsolescence, etc. etc.

Sensible people will want to avoid engaging with that, and avoid sinking resources into it, as much as possible!

And, yes, it’s true that business has also repeatedly given us marvelous miracles in recent years, and that those miracles go unappreciated because they get immediately folded into the status quo. But stomping your feet, and insisting that you don’t get enough appreciation for all that you do, is not a winning strategy in the arena of public opinion.

People who want to rehabilitate capitalism really might want to think about doing what it takes to fix the current culture of business.

“Reduction of consumer surplus,” in econ terms.

So here’s the plan: every company is either a startup or a chaebol. If you’re a startup you get to move fast and break things, invent new products, innovate your processes, remove your processes, create new products, deprecate old ones, lower prices, raise prices, eliminate the entire concept of prices, etc. Your shareholders will probably lose everything and your company will go bankrupt, but there’s a small chance that you all become billionaires.

If you’re a chaebol then you are part of a government-enforced oligopoly and everything you do involves infinite bureaucracy and is guaranteed to be basically the same forever. You cannot change your prices without an act of Congress, you cannot mothball old products, you cannot substantially change the products you already offer without signoff from 57 government regulators. You will not maximize shareholder value. You will not delight your customers. You will also not annoy them by enshittifying a product that they’re used to. You will provide modest, mostly-predictable returns to your customers and a well-understood palette of the same products at the same quality for ever and ever.

Occasionally a startup will become very successful. At some well-defined revenue threshold (somewhere around $10B), you are legally required to stop being a startup and become a chaebol instead, with all of the implications listed above. Everyone understands this, and when you cross the threshold you will have an official ceremony with the head of the SEC, shake hands with your new regulatory best buddies, and be invited into the secret group chat with all of the other chaebol oligarchs. Everyone in the business will understand that the exciting times are over and everything from here on out is following procedures and obeying regulations, and the customers will understand that whatever the product is now is what it will be for the rest of time.

I agree to your terms.

One of the most common libertarian-adjacent anti-government arguments - or, uh, argument-like gestures (non-derogatory) - is: Boy, the DMV sure does suck! Or, if you prefer, Reagan’s old line about hearing that someone is from the government and here to help. The government is bad at doing things, its works are expensive and inefficient, everything it touches turns to shit. Sensible people will want to avoid engaging with it, and avoid sinking resources into it, as much as possible.

And there are obviously elements of truth to this, if you’re discoursing in good faith, although it’s just as obvious that the government regularly works miracles that go unappreciated because they get immediately folded into the status quo.

There has been a lot of talk, of late, about the growing popularity of socialism, and the way that all the kids treat “capitalism” as a dirty word, and the general contempt for private enterprise, etc. etc. Much of that talk has come from people who regard this as very bad and want to put a stop to it.

I respectfully submit: a large part of what’s going on is, well, enshittification. It’s increasingly noticeable that all the businesses with whom you interact are focused on extracting money from you in exchange for as little as possible. Quality sucks across the board. Customer service sucks. Shrinkflation, planned obsolescence, etc. etc.

Sensible people will want to avoid engaging with that, and avoid sinking resources into it, as much as possible!

And, yes, it’s true that business has also repeatedly given us marvelous miracles in recent years, and that those miracles go unappreciated because they get immediately folded into the status quo. But stomping your feet, and insisting that you don’t get enough appreciation for all that you do, is not a winning strategy in the arena of public opinion.

People who want to rehabilitate capitalism really might want to think about doing what it takes to fix the current culture of business.

This one is basically just for Ann Arborites:

Proposal E is on your ballot for the upcoming election (get those ballots in by Tuesday Nov 3!).

I’m gonna vote NO on Prop E.

Here is the entirety of the ballot language:

Creation and Governance of a Municipal Electric Utility
Shall Chapter 15 of the Charter be amended to require the City to establish a municipal electric utility and governance structure therefore?

That sounds good–so good, that I thought we’d already voted for this. This left me confused as to why I had to vote for this again, so I looked at the complete ordinance language that would be enacted if Prop E passes. I walked away more confused and started to get worried.

Anyway, here is the skinny:

1. Prop E has nothing to do with the SEU that something like 80% of us supported and is already doing really good work that brings together renewable energy and justice. Bravo!
2. Prop E is a totally separate parallel effort to buy the crappy power infrastructure we have (poles and lines and transformers and all the other things that blow down every time we have a big wind) from DTE
3. That requires a massive immediate investment (on the order of $500,000,000 to $1 billion)
4. That equipment has been neglected for decades (which is why folks are mad enough here to want to start their own power company), so we’d also inherit the maintenance burden on busted down old equipment
5. That price tag does not include any way to generate power; we’d still need to buy that on the open market. We’d just be buying poles and wires.
6. The only avenue to pay for this is basically rate increases, so power would get more expensive immediately (in a city already deep into a housing affordability crisis that is forcing out families and shrinking our schools), at a time when people are acutely aware of rising energy costs (data centers, A.I., wars in Europe and the Middle East, etc.)
7. There is no recent example of a community successfully buying out a local utility company and converting it to a municipal utility. Boulder (a much wealthier community than Ann Arbor—which is by no means economically deprived) tried and failed. The successful municipal utilities here in Michigan were formed in the late 1800–1900s and were the original power companies in those areas; there are only two examples of a community buying out a traditional power company in Michigan, one is Bay City (which was already running its own municipal utility and bought out redundant grid structure) and the other Traverse City—who did so in 1912. Point being: conditions are somewhat different now, and pointing to success in Lansing (Lansing Board of Water & Light, founded 1885) and Holland (Holland Board of Public Works, 1893) are not good priors for us buying ill-maintained second-hand equipment from DTE in 2027 in a city that has no power generation capacity and nowhere to build it.

This roundtable discussion composed almost entirely of environmentalists, activists, and developers with a track record for sustainability and eliminating reliance on fossil fuels helped me understand what I was missing when I looked at this inscrutable wall of text:

Give this a watch and don’t forget to get your ballot in early or show up in-person on Nov 3.

tiktoks-i-enjoyed:

TT OP is @ augustgladstone (he/him).