i am middle aged man, i experienced life since before even computer and smartphone is a thing like today.
back then, i feel that life is much easier, what i mean easier is more simple life, less competition, less stress, fresh environment, and more happiness despite lack of technology.
but right now, everything is just too complicated despite of power of tech, internet, smartphone, and AI helps, i feel that life is much harder right now, what i mean is like competition is everywhere, stressful everyday, crowded city, and i easily depressed these days.
is it just me or everyone else can relate to what happens right now?
nah lil bro. The enshittification is real and huge. The quality of goods, particularly what used to be reputable brands, is 100% in the shitter. I have started only buying fabric with natural fibers in them because polyester sucks. Turns out that’s a lot harder than it used to be. I’ve been a regular grocery shopper for the entirety of this century. Things were pretty much the same price for years and years. There was a bump in 08 to punish us for electing a half-black guy and demanding reasonable pay, but then it stabilized until around 2018. Shit has increased in price by multiples while quantity and quality have plummeted.
We’re fucked bro. Get whatever enjoyment out of this life while you can. There are some unprecedented hard times coming. We’re going to pay for the recklessness and irresponsibility of the boomers. Buy hey, they got theirs, didn’t they?
So, I hear you, but i saw this meme of newspaper clippings going back to like 1900 where business owners were quoted “people don’t want to work anymore”. We think it’s a new idea but its like 100+ years old.
Maybe companies have always looked for ways to cut corners and screw customers, we just focus on our last 20 years. And it’s not that before we got older they were all reputable and its only recently they’ve gone this greedy path. Its just cuz we didn’t know about it as kids, especially cuz the interent wasn’t huge yet.
I’m not trying to say things aren’t getting worse. They definitely are. But what if we’ve had this long, general decline of everything that’s always been happening and we didn’t see it or feel it cuz we were just kids.
This isn’t the boomers fault, what did they do? There is no reason we can’t get good pay and cheap groceries now, aside from capitalists knowing they don’t need to anymore.
All the boomers in government are the problem.
Fucking yanks have an 80yr old for fucks sake. Can’t be any more out of touch then being older then most of your country.
Australia is no better really anyone in politics gets there sits there gets old and out of touch.
Their needs to be a hard limit on politicians so they don’t run the country based on how it was as they grew up 65 years ago. That’s an entirely different world
No politician, older or younger can make change without permission from the ruling class. In the case of capitalist countries that is the capitalist class. A younger politician won’t change the fact that the capitalist class forces them to do there bidding for them.
What about unions?
If you beleive they can stand up to a corporation then there’s no reason politicians could do the same.
Not to mention authoritarian countries stand up to corporations they don’t support.
There’s no real solution
What unions? Union membership in Australia has been falling since at least the '70s (source). The press is almost always anti union resulting in some of them being legally dismantled when they ask for too many rights. Such as the BLF. The unions that remain today only ever go on strike as a last resort, when conditions are dire.
Regardless unions are able to go on strike because they take away something bosses need: workers. When workers go on strike profits for bosses fall immediately and bosses are forced to do what they need to get workers working again.
Politicians don’t have this leverage. Political parties must do the bidding of capitalists in order to maintain donations to fund their advertising campaign. The capitalist class owns virtually all media and have almost complete control in terms of shaping peoples opinion on the current government. Politicians can’t implement policies that benefits workers at the expense of the rich.
I’m going to assume by “authoritarian” you mean socialist countries such as Vietnam, China, Cuba etc. These countries have the ability to stand up to corporations because they are truly democratic. The press of our capitalist country (I’m Australian too) has told us these country’s are authoritarian because they pose a social order that competes with capitalism.
The reality is that these countries are able to stand up to corporations because their government is ruled by the working class, not by the capitalist class. This is also why these countries consistently make decisions that benefit the working class at the expense of the capitalist class. Decisions such as cheap or free healthcare, immense poverty reduction schemes, increasing wages etc.