It's just taking much longer than I thought it would, but things appear to be accelerating, which is why my 5-year-plan includes a rural base with as much self-sufficiency as I can muster, short of being an all-out "prepper,"
The American cultural engine appears to work like this:
Small pocket of creativity explodes and gains grassroots, word-of-mouth popularity.
Media notices, transmits description of good thing to mass audience which extends popularity to millions.
Corporate investors arrive and either steal or buy the rights to the new great thing.
New owners run the good thing into the ground by saturating the market with it and their agents/affiliates attempt to mimic the original with consistently bad results.
One of the interesting things about capitalism is that, while both theory and practice bear out the fact that competition spurs innovation, the dream of large companies and corporations is to find that one magic thing that lets them rake in profits without ever having to innovate again.
You see it in movies: "Wow we made a ton of money with that superhero movie let's just clone it over and over and we'll be rich forever!". And you see it in all the other things that are trying to move to a subscription model.
If I had to pick one of the worst things about modern society (other than the politics of the left) it would probably be this slavish devotion to rent-seeking that modern companies all seem to have ascribed to.
Yeah. It seems the days of "building a better mouse trap" are long gone, except maybe in the tech sector, but their innovations have dubious benefits and are outpacing our ability to make good use of them.
Just another feature of a dying culture.
It's just taking much longer than I thought it would, but things appear to be accelerating, which is why my 5-year-plan includes a rural base with as much self-sufficiency as I can muster, short of being an all-out "prepper,"
The American cultural engine appears to work like this:
Small pocket of creativity explodes and gains grassroots, word-of-mouth popularity.
Media notices, transmits description of good thing to mass audience which extends popularity to millions.
Corporate investors arrive and either steal or buy the rights to the new great thing.
New owners run the good thing into the ground by saturating the market with it and their agents/affiliates attempt to mimic the original with consistently bad results.
Repeat ad infinitum.
One of the interesting things about capitalism is that, while both theory and practice bear out the fact that competition spurs innovation, the dream of large companies and corporations is to find that one magic thing that lets them rake in profits without ever having to innovate again.
You see it in movies: "Wow we made a ton of money with that superhero movie let's just clone it over and over and we'll be rich forever!". And you see it in all the other things that are trying to move to a subscription model.
If I had to pick one of the worst things about modern society (other than the politics of the left) it would probably be this slavish devotion to rent-seeking that modern companies all seem to have ascribed to.
Yeah. It seems the days of "building a better mouse trap" are long gone, except maybe in the tech sector, but their innovations have dubious benefits and are outpacing our ability to make good use of them.