I think so too! It was amazingly bipartisan when Theodore Roosevelt got it to work for him in the 1900s. My fear is that the Dems have already been outflanked on this - Republicans have been the first to move on banning TikTok, etc. They could well make anti-monopolization a 'populist' issue and paint Dems as the party of Big Tech.
Loved this essay. It is important to articulate what is happening (even if it is unclear what is happening or how to fix the problem). The iPad ordering is hard for older people who have not kept up with technology, people travelling in a foreign country whose phones are not set up for roaming, or when your phone needs to be charged. I was in a restaurant in London with my family that had iPad ordering. My phone was not charged so they had to order for me. When we had to return an incorrect order, we discovered that no one working there spoke English and that the workers all spoke different languages, so everyone had to use Google translate to communicate. An inconvenience for us, but a good thing for them that they could find work without speaking English.
Thank you Lynn! The ipad ordering is like the worst thing ever - creating a complicated, expensive, cumbersome system for two purposes: a) to discourage communication with people who are right there in the room with you; b) and to lay off those people because their jobs are now superfluous given a new, totally-unneeded technology.
Monopolization masquerading as the free market 100% - have felt / observed / experienced the same things when I am back in the US, especially since living abroad you really noticing the smallest details. Adam Curtis has some great documentaries he made for BBC about the rise and fall of the Soviet Union and he eludes to the similarities of the direction the US was going in, even back then in the 90s and early 00s. Wild times, pendulums swinging, worse before it gets better but it will have to get better eventually. Right?
Thank you Augusta! I should check out the documentaries. My concern is that, when bad ideas take ahold, there's no pendulum that necessarily shifts back - you just sort of get locked in the logic of the bad idea. The game is to try to engage with the ideas before they become so prevalent that they just seem to be part of the facts of life.
It took the Roman Empire 400 years of slow systemic failure to collapse in 410 “officially”. The Communist Empire failed inside 70 years. The US Empire, if one said was the dominant Western power after 1946, is in its 77th year and showing all the systemic signs of corruption and regulatory capture any empire in the process of failing would typically demonstrate. War is now the main economic driver of the US economy and takes the majority of discretionary funds from the US taxpayer. This alone is a clear sign of a state in the process of failing as the main economic drivers are the negative impulses of destruction and not the positive impulses of building. What you’re describing is the process of late stage capitalism slowly eating itself. Add into this mix the process of war being spread around the globe by the Washington-Pentagon-WallSt troika and you not only have a failing state but a hugely belligerent one as well.
Nice comment! Corruption, regulatory 'capture,' the giant military-industrial complex are all major concerns - and this, really, is what our political conversation should be about (not that there are necessarily good answers to any of these!). Really appreciate it.
Another interesting aspect is the inverted power dynamic that supports this clear structural failure where the many of us in the billions of people have virtually no say or power to create meaningful change either politically or economically yet a few million people are able to maintain this failing civilizational dynamic inside this Troika. In the West we call our most wealthy "billionaires" and those in the east we call Oligarchs. A small but strange manufactured cultural distinction. The data in wage growth post WW2 to 1979 showed reasonable growth and some social satisfaction and then the absolute halting of this wage growth post 1979 doesn't even get a mention in most of our discussions and yet has been one of the biggest dynamics supporting our failing political economy and speaks again to this inverted power dynamic.
Until we step up as a cohesive group and address some of these basic dynamics in our global economy we're basically going to be fed this bowl of gruel until it breaks or collapses inside a major manufactured war, probably with China. AI will exacerbate this process in wonderful and grotesque ways. Good times!
A failed state? No, the government apparatus is still running, albeit poorly. A failed society? Absolutely. On top of atomization and the largely successful deconstruction of communities (with the exception of self-segregated, crime-ridden neighborhoods) the two sides cannot even agree on basic reality: that's very fundamental. Josh's interesting article today about men dropping out of college highlighted another chasmic disagreement: the "men are the problem" side and what I call the "we are all human" side, the former of which is in part responsible for causing men to ditch academia. These are not your average "love or hate Hawaiian pizza" disagreements. (Though I speak in jest: that, of course, is the most serious disagreement :D ) Countries have gone to Civil War over differences like this. We'd probably be in one already if people weren't so accustomed to the good life.
As for iPad restaurants, thankfully they're only trickling into this part of the world. There's something about them that makes it easy for companies to not care about customer service or employees: the employee can be replaced, while the customer should know how to use it because we're all plugged in. Don't reckon this will take us to a good place.
Good point Felix. Failed states and failed societies are two different things - and 'failed society' is more of what I'm getting at. It's really very hard at the moment to articulate what the US' principles are other than 'buy low sell high.' And I think that societies, even the US, ultimately need more trenchant myths than that.
Thanks for the comment Robert. You may be right. I was definitely in a mood when I wrote this. But I've been coming to grips with a half-century of economic devastation to the American hinterland - fundamentally, small-town, small-city America used to be a nice place to live and it's not now. And I think it's worth examining what the dynamics are that have brought about that transition - because I don't think they'll be limited to small towns.
Interesting! Anti-monopolization could easily be a powerful bi-partisan issue. Let's hope.
I think so too! It was amazingly bipartisan when Theodore Roosevelt got it to work for him in the 1900s. My fear is that the Dems have already been outflanked on this - Republicans have been the first to move on banning TikTok, etc. They could well make anti-monopolization a 'populist' issue and paint Dems as the party of Big Tech.
Loved this essay. It is important to articulate what is happening (even if it is unclear what is happening or how to fix the problem). The iPad ordering is hard for older people who have not kept up with technology, people travelling in a foreign country whose phones are not set up for roaming, or when your phone needs to be charged. I was in a restaurant in London with my family that had iPad ordering. My phone was not charged so they had to order for me. When we had to return an incorrect order, we discovered that no one working there spoke English and that the workers all spoke different languages, so everyone had to use Google translate to communicate. An inconvenience for us, but a good thing for them that they could find work without speaking English.
Thank you Lynn! The ipad ordering is like the worst thing ever - creating a complicated, expensive, cumbersome system for two purposes: a) to discourage communication with people who are right there in the room with you; b) and to lay off those people because their jobs are now superfluous given a new, totally-unneeded technology.
Monopolization masquerading as the free market 100% - have felt / observed / experienced the same things when I am back in the US, especially since living abroad you really noticing the smallest details. Adam Curtis has some great documentaries he made for BBC about the rise and fall of the Soviet Union and he eludes to the similarities of the direction the US was going in, even back then in the 90s and early 00s. Wild times, pendulums swinging, worse before it gets better but it will have to get better eventually. Right?
Thank you Augusta! I should check out the documentaries. My concern is that, when bad ideas take ahold, there's no pendulum that necessarily shifts back - you just sort of get locked in the logic of the bad idea. The game is to try to engage with the ideas before they become so prevalent that they just seem to be part of the facts of life.
This -> "monopolization masquerading as the free market" is spot on.
Thank you Stephanie!
It took the Roman Empire 400 years of slow systemic failure to collapse in 410 “officially”. The Communist Empire failed inside 70 years. The US Empire, if one said was the dominant Western power after 1946, is in its 77th year and showing all the systemic signs of corruption and regulatory capture any empire in the process of failing would typically demonstrate. War is now the main economic driver of the US economy and takes the majority of discretionary funds from the US taxpayer. This alone is a clear sign of a state in the process of failing as the main economic drivers are the negative impulses of destruction and not the positive impulses of building. What you’re describing is the process of late stage capitalism slowly eating itself. Add into this mix the process of war being spread around the globe by the Washington-Pentagon-WallSt troika and you not only have a failing state but a hugely belligerent one as well.
Nice comment! Corruption, regulatory 'capture,' the giant military-industrial complex are all major concerns - and this, really, is what our political conversation should be about (not that there are necessarily good answers to any of these!). Really appreciate it.
Another interesting aspect is the inverted power dynamic that supports this clear structural failure where the many of us in the billions of people have virtually no say or power to create meaningful change either politically or economically yet a few million people are able to maintain this failing civilizational dynamic inside this Troika. In the West we call our most wealthy "billionaires" and those in the east we call Oligarchs. A small but strange manufactured cultural distinction. The data in wage growth post WW2 to 1979 showed reasonable growth and some social satisfaction and then the absolute halting of this wage growth post 1979 doesn't even get a mention in most of our discussions and yet has been one of the biggest dynamics supporting our failing political economy and speaks again to this inverted power dynamic.
Until we step up as a cohesive group and address some of these basic dynamics in our global economy we're basically going to be fed this bowl of gruel until it breaks or collapses inside a major manufactured war, probably with China. AI will exacerbate this process in wonderful and grotesque ways. Good times!
A failed state? No, the government apparatus is still running, albeit poorly. A failed society? Absolutely. On top of atomization and the largely successful deconstruction of communities (with the exception of self-segregated, crime-ridden neighborhoods) the two sides cannot even agree on basic reality: that's very fundamental. Josh's interesting article today about men dropping out of college highlighted another chasmic disagreement: the "men are the problem" side and what I call the "we are all human" side, the former of which is in part responsible for causing men to ditch academia. These are not your average "love or hate Hawaiian pizza" disagreements. (Though I speak in jest: that, of course, is the most serious disagreement :D ) Countries have gone to Civil War over differences like this. We'd probably be in one already if people weren't so accustomed to the good life.
As for iPad restaurants, thankfully they're only trickling into this part of the world. There's something about them that makes it easy for companies to not care about customer service or employees: the employee can be replaced, while the customer should know how to use it because we're all plugged in. Don't reckon this will take us to a good place.
Good point Felix. Failed states and failed societies are two different things - and 'failed society' is more of what I'm getting at. It's really very hard at the moment to articulate what the US' principles are other than 'buy low sell high.' And I think that societies, even the US, ultimately need more trenchant myths than that.
Seems more of an airline issue than a broad economic issue. Too much of a stretch to apply problems with airlines to all companies everywhere.
Thanks for the comment Robert. You may be right. I was definitely in a mood when I wrote this. But I've been coming to grips with a half-century of economic devastation to the American hinterland - fundamentally, small-town, small-city America used to be a nice place to live and it's not now. And I think it's worth examining what the dynamics are that have brought about that transition - because I don't think they'll be limited to small towns.