Consolidation and Near Monopolies Are Making Everything Terrible
This may be the edition of the newsletter where I enter, or more accurately, finally embrace the full Andy Rooney that is often my inner monologue. Rooney was a commentator on CBS News who would end episodes of 60 Minutes with tirades about the inane irritations of daily life. His rant about bottled water is an all-timer.
I spend a lot of time talking in the newsletter about the scams and hacks that besiege us in 2023. But in discussing those scams, I have excluded the underlying cause or commonality that permeates nearly all our consumer experiences. Due to consolidation reducing the market to a bunch of monopolies and near monopolies, we are collectively captive to a bunch of mediocre corporations. The lack of competition breeds complacency, a culture of crap service, and ever soaring prices—easily exceeding the rate of inflation.
We live in whatever you call the opposite of a “Golden Age” of the consumer experience.
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Everything is getting more expensive while the quality of goods and services degrade—it's mass enshittification. Companies charge for services that used to be free and raise their prices while making their service worse and we all just take it. It’s not just inflation, rising prices are a part of life, but paying more and getting less isn’t the market working, it’s evidence of broken markets, the failures of regulators to act, or both.
I try to keep the newsletter brief, I could have picked ten examples from this week: YouTube blocking ad-blocking software; Paying for (stupid) Twitter; 23andMe saying “sorry, not sorry your genetic info is now for sale on the darkweb”; EV manufacturers jumping to Tesla’s proprietary standard, rather than the current open standard. It goes on & on. Again, these are all just this week..
Charging More for the Same Drug: The federal government threw mountains of money and lab hours at helping develop oral treatments for Covid-19, in partnership with pharmaceutical companies. One of those projects, Paxlovid, was successful and has been deployed around the country to combat the Covid. Under the current agreement the doses are free for all Americans. The US government is currently paying Pfizer $530 per five day course and each course of the drug costs Pfizer about $13 to produce.
This week Pfizer announced their intent to start charging $1390 per course when the current deal with feds expires. They enjoy a monopoly on the lifesaving drug, created largely with federal tax dollars. The US government could pass price controls on the drug; they could pass laws allowing the reimportation of the drug from countries that mandate lower prices. Neither is remotely likely and families will get stuck with the bills.
Cornering the Market, Delivering an Inferior Product: This week Vice reported on the “Kia Boys Trend.” Kia and Hyundai are part of the same Korean auto conglomerate that have effectively cornered the lower end of the US car market. Three of the five cheapest new cars in the US market are Kias. Their vehicles are among the only new car brands accessible to many working families. Yet because of a flaw in the manufacture of the vehicles, thieves have found them extremely easy to steal. There’s a ton of discussion in US media about “soaring crime” and “out-of-control cities,” but the plague of auto theft many communities are experiencing was literally engineered:
The nationwide surge in Kia and Hyundai thefts is the result of multiple, overlapping factors. The car companies didn’t install a simple, cheap, yet effective anti-theft device in most of its cars over a 10-year period unlike every other manufacturer, creating a vulnerability that makes the cars easy to target and steal. This vulnerability was widely shared on social media platforms starting in 2021 and a subculture developed around showing off those stolen cars in videos posted online to Kia Boys accounts.
The part that Hyundai/Kia decided not to install costs roughly fifty dollars. Rather than accepting blame, they are faulting social media companies and blaming local officials and police departments. Many Hyundai/Kia owners had their vehicles stolen multiple times and are being dropped by their insurance companies.
Raising Prices After Making the Service Worse: Netflix recently cracked down on password sharing. According to Time, the company has a system that looks at IP addresses, device IDs, and account activity from the devices signed into an account to determine whether or not a device is associated with a household. This crackdown netted them a surge in new customers, gaining 8.8 million new sign-ups.
At the same time, they introduced a tier of the service with commercials in many global markets. These two moves each make the service worse. Now the company is preparing to increase prices, joining Disney+, Hulu, Max, and YouTube TV in raising prices this year.
This isn’t inflation. This isn’t capitalism. It’s predatory.
I’m sick of it.
I’m tired of paying more for services that deliver less. I am sick of seeing the things I buy cost more and be of lower quality. If I can avoid doing business with these companies, I do and will. My wife laughs that I keep trying to cancel every subscription service we have but it’s the only way I can really fight back or have some agency over any of it.
Bits and Recommendations for the Week
Part of me wanted to write about the situation in Gaza this week but I don’t have anything insightful to add to what is already out there: killing civilians is anathema when it was done by non-state actors or by a state. I condemn the attack on Israeli citizens and I condemn the disproportionate reprisal attacks by the state of Israel. Collective punishment is illegal under international law and the bombings in Gaza have already killed twice the number of people as were killed in the initial Hamas attacks. The people of Palestine deserve a state, rather than living in an outdoor prison, and the people of Israel deserve to not face rocket barrages and regular threats on their territory. That’s it. Everything else is noise and propaganda.
Speaking of propaganda, I'm (more) disgusted (than usual) by coverage of recent events in most US media. I am also saddened by the way disinformation and misinformation are taking root in the American zeitgeist. Readers will know, I'm generally pessimistic about US political culture but the last few weeks were especially bleak. I’ve rarely felt further from home than I felt watching US media coverage.
With that said, here are some international sources that I've read or listened to that are miles better than what I'm seeing from the US press and will help you get a sense of events on the ground:
A primer on the conflict and how the attacks unfolded - The National
On the impact of the Hamas attacks on Israel society and Israel's new offensive posture - The National
Live Updates from Haaretz, an English language newspaper in Israel
Coverage of the collective punishment happening in Gaza - DW
Happier times next week, hopefully.
As always, if you have any thoughts or feedback about the newsletter, I welcome it, and I really appreciate it when folks share Takes & Typos with their friends.
As always, if you have any thoughts or feedback about the newsletter, I welcome it, and I really appreciate it when folks share the newsletter with their friends.