Well you see: * We started bailing out big businesses, and ignoring anti-competition laws. * Businesses deemed "to big to fail" no longer needed to compete on customer satisfaction. * They optimized for the short-term quarterly KPIs of the stock market and shareholders. * Other businesses had to follow suit just to be competitive. And so America moved from real capitalism, where consumers vote with their wallets, to a post-capitalist oligarchy, where the wealthy buy votes. This was entrenched with Citizen's United allowing unlimited dark money into politics, preventing laws from rolling this back. So businesses went from competing for happy customers, to competing to make the most dollars for those who owned the government. And the enshittification of America was cemented. Real capitalism is what we had in the 1970s with strong unions, a growing middle class, reasonable taxes and businesses that provided quality goods and services. Oligarchs spent a fuck-ton of money telling you that what you have today is capitalism and that you must either defend it (or hate all capital) because it keeps you in-fighting between political parties instead of being angry at them. When we realize that good capitalism involves social programs, labor, and businesses that do right by consumers - we can get back to this world. We can have leg room again!(Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth))