r/Capitalism • u/Strummerpinx • 11h ago
Unregulated capitalism corrupts every pleasurable communication experience in human life
Unregulated capitalism sucks. Seriously, it corrupts every pleasurable communication experience in human life. I remember when I was growing up in the 1980s and the mail system started to get corrupted.
It went from a social good that delivered letters from friends and postcards from family, to a slop machine where 95% of everything was ads, fake clearinghouse sweepstakes scams, political tracts to anti-abortion screeds with disgusting pictures on them, chainmail letters, bank promotions, CDs from sussy companies and non-stop requests for charity donations. It got so going through the mail for that one letter from someone you actually cared about was another annoying chore.
I remember growing up in the 1990s and the phone system started to get corrupted. Every call was from somebody wanting to give you a survey, long distance services, charity requests, unnecessary duct cleaning services, scam you out of money or robocalls for candidates for public office or in another language entirely. It got so picking up the phone was annoying because 95% of the time it wasn’t anyone you knew who actually wanted to talk to you, just companies after your money.
These were the reasons most of us abandoned phones and mail as the main way of communicating with people and turned to email and other online means. Initially the requests for penis enlargement that came with every refresh of the email account were easy to see and block. The occasional ad on Facebook or corporate account was unobtrusive. But now the corruption has eaten up the internet. Everything is just trying to sell you something and the reason you got on there— to communicate with some other person is getting increasingly more difficult to do.
Some day a new communication technology will come along and everybody will jump ship. Internet companies will bemoan it and blame the technology. Guys, nobody abandoned phones or snail mail “because technology.” The experience of these communication media had to get so corrupted that they no longer were fit to purpose first and then everybody abandoned ship.
That’s what people who are corrupting these platforms with all their ads and BS don’t understand. Through unregulated capitalism they are destroy whatever value these modes of communication had in the first place that made people eager to adopt them. They have now guaranteed their own obsolescence.
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u/ItShouldntBe06 10h ago
These commies are getting worse and worse with their arguments.
“Ohh back then we had junk CDs sent from scummy companies (Columbia House?), now we get pop up ads that we GASP! choose to ignore! (There’s different web browser extensions that block pop-up ads by the way).”
We actually have the opposite problem right now, industries are OVERREGULATED which is causing prices going up. So no, we don’t have unregulated capitalism, we have overregulated crony capitalism driving up prices due to extensive government intervention. The solution is deregulation.
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u/PhilRubdiez 10h ago
Yes, undaunting, life-altering corruptions such as junk mail and pop-up ads. Woe unto us all. Time to dismantle the First Amendment.
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u/Lepew1 10h ago
I grew up in the same time. We had so much junk mail that we wanted to invent something to roll it into a log to keep the fireplace going. We had junk calls too. Do you remember the early answering machine messages aimed at stringing along solicitors? Did you know back then you could dial They Might Be Giants and listen to their latest song on their answering machine?
The internet came at us fast and hard, faster than many could adapt. And Artificial General Intelligence is even more frightening particularly if it is allowed or encouraged to scrape the insecure collected data of our lives and use it to manipulate us.
We can crawl down an infinity of such dark passages, spiraling downward in dismay. Or we can be beings of light, chasing the positive, and dancing in the unlimited possibilities of the sun. Put me in a cheesy sun dancing costume. It may be the he wrong choice, but I will have fun dancing with others like me.
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u/Savag3k1ller 8h ago
We never abandoned phones, literally every person has a mobile phone, even the poor. We abandoned landlines because we didn't want to be stuck attached to a landline for everything. Technology moved on. Spam is everywhere, even emails, even spam/scammer calls today on our phones.
Leftist socialist are some of the lowest IQ on earth.
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u/Ok-Week625 10h ago
"Unregulated capitalism"
Goes on to name some of the most regulated industries in the country, some even government forced monopolies/oligopolies.