by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
Many consumers have yet to grasp how vulnerable they are to increasingly routine digital-component failures.
One of the greatest myths about “free markets” is that enterprises create products and services to meet the needs of consumers. That sounds nice but that’s not what happens in monopoly-cartel dominated economies like ours. In monopoly-cartel dominated economies like ours, what actually happens is the monopoly / cartel (i.e. a handful of quasi-monopolies that completely dominate their sector) limit their offerings to the most profitable products and services and force customers to buy them by making it impossible to find better-value options.
Monopoly-cartel dominated economies like ours are rife with intentionally shoddy quality products and services because durability is anathema to ever-higher profits. By designing products and services to fail–planned obsolescence–or become obsolescent by other means–your product is no longer supported–monopolies / cartels force consumers to constantly replace failed or timed-out products.