I try to spend consciously and it’s fucking depressing. The list of companies I avoid grows and grows and grows. If it isn’t some antisocial billionaires throwing their weight around trying to get more money or change the world to better fit their vision with complete and utter disregard for normal people, it’s pressure from the millionaires to increase share value so they can try to get their turn.

The need to increase profit, or more recently increase the rate of growth (the line that shows how fast the line goes up has been discovered so now that line needs to go up), has ruined everything.

If the company isn’t completely, directly captured by these antisocial forces they are indirectly captured by the environment that is dominated by those same forces. Monopolies, anticompetitive business practices, hostile takeovers, vulture capitalists, ladder pulling, or just people strapped for cash that just buy whatever is cheaper regardless of the human cost involved.

Now everyone else is being squeezed and struggle to live a decent life or find dignity. Those responsible for this environment just use those struggling people. They’ll redirect them to squeezing each other - scams, pyramid schemes, MLMs. They’ll keep us fighting amongst ourselves - blame immigrants, minorities, DEI.

Now “AI” is continuing to get hyped and pushed even if it sucks at its job and demands insane amount of energy. It’s way cheaper than people, or at least the cost is easier to pass on to others and it might be even cheaper eventually… so everyone is investing in it.

From an American perspective, it’s just so much and I feel like things are only getting worse and fast.