Enshitification

 Someone coined the term "enshitification" to describe the various mundane ways that 21st century life is just a needless hassle at the worst time. Spam emails, constantly needing a new PIN or log in information, the impossibility of opting out of things. All these little speed bumps put up to make it easier for someone somewhere to get clicks or to sell ad revenues.  The Biden administration issued a rule to make unsubscribing to subscriptions much easier as an attack on this relentless immiserating of daily life.

Right now, I have to deal with two different government websites and in both cases I can never talk to the real human being to solve my problems. Enshitification.

I have a hunch this is going to be a huge problem for the next four years. Will RFK Jr "make measles great again"? Possibly. Will the mass exodus of competent civil servants from HHS mean that insurance companies start screwing around with claims? Almost certainly. 

Democratic government - big D and small d - is about creating a counterbalance to corporate interests, and corporate interests are primarily about maximizing profits. Trump will put the regulatory state up for sale, leading to unsafe food, unsafe travel, unsafe products. But, for most of us, we won't see that impact our daily lives in terms of death and destruction. Could that happen? Yes, but more likely things will just get worse and worse in small ways, as the ability of state to create safety and even convenience in our communities will get stripped away.

This really is the New Gilded Age. We have our second non-sequential president, true, but the 1880s and '90s were a time of corporate consolidation, trammeling of workers' rights, unsafe food and water, overwhelming corruption and widespread unrest. The result was - even during the Cleveland and McKinley administration - local forms of what would become the Progressive Movement began to grow. Eventually, that movement would expand democracy and rein in the corporate behemoths that strangled the American economy.

But, yeah, the next four years are going to suck.