2026-10-23 06:08 UTC
Roughly the same problem afflicts #computer hardware and your bathroom plumbing: through a lengthy process of coalescence and attrition and assimilation and so forth, the basic items and objects and tools upon which the daily lives of the ordinary person (or "the consumer", to use the somewhat offensive language of U.S. politics) are mass-manufactured overseas (i.e. anywhere the people can be lashed into working for the smallest pay) and often squeezed down to just a few brands.
So often there's a de facto monopoly on some product, at least in a certain region of the country. If your toilet malfunctions or your kitchen tap starts leaking water, you go to whatever shops are handy (if any) and, unless you're lucky enough to be adjacent to a hardware superstore, you might have exactly one choice of product to buy.
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@mxchara@cyberpunk.lol 2026-10-23 06:14
But wait! the reader may cry. Isn't #capitalism good at this one thing at least--providing variety? Doesn't "the market" have everything for every conceivable need? Well, no, it doesn't. But for now I'll concede that "the market" in general, meaning the global marketplace of everything's that's salable, contains an enormous variety of products of all sorts. But only a very thin sliver of that great variety is chosen to be distributed in the United States as "consumer goods", the sort of thing that ends up in local shops. What about Internet sales? you might ask. Well...about that #Amazon stuff... (more)