Enshittifying enshittification

The thing is, though, that the behaviors that make up enshittification didn’t even start with network-based services. Companies do the same thing with physical products all the time, or with employment benefits, or basically anything where you can get a good reputation and then start shaving away value to increase short term profit.

Look at Starbucks. Here’s a company that in the early 00s was a great employer. They paid more than most companies looking for employees with similar experience, they provided benefits that were all but unheard of for a coffee shop or a similar chain, and they literally put very intentional focus on making their employees happy so their customers would be happy. Jump forward 20 years and the same company is working people to the bone, going out of their way to avoid giving people enough hours to get benefits, and doing anything they can to save on labor.

They already have the reputation and put a huge chunk of the competition out of business during the expansion phase (in 2005 they averaged 3 new stores a day according to training documents). Now that they are established they can cut corners.

The same thing has happened with appliances, with furniture, with clothes, food, bath and body products, even something as simple as tissues.

The useful part of the term enshittification is that it helps people point at something toxic, call it out, and figure out how to avoid it. If it can be applied to the larger pattern to let people see that things are getting worse as a result of powerful people raking back every scrap of value they can manage after expanding to take out the competition, I think we’ll be materially better off.