Crapification 101

When looking at this amazing movie poster, circa 1987, indirectly promoting schlock, the notion of the crapification of America comes to mind in terms of governance, the economy and the dumbing down of people residing in a dying empire addicted to the buying of stuff. 

To whit ...

One aspect nobody seems to notice is the transformation from a society that once drew its identity from producing quality goods and services to a society that draws its identity from consuming crapified goods and services. Now that Americans define themselves by consuming, they are enslaved to consumption: to limit consumption is to disappear--and 'spending time" on social media is a form of consumption, even if no goods or services are purchased directly, as one's attention / time are valuable commodities. 

In other words, Americans have been trained like Pavlov's dogs to consume, no matter how poor the quality and service. We just buy it anyway, and grumble over the decaying quality and service--but we won't take the only action that would impact corporations and the government: stop buying the products and services.  Opt out, drop out, make it at home, cancel the service, just stop buying abysmally made junk and pathetically poor services. 

Corporations and the government are monopolies or quasi-monopolies, and so they don't have to care whether customers are appalled by poor quality and service: they know the customer has to consume whatever is offered, no matter how crapified. 

Endgame

In the Technicolor fantasy of corporate promoters, enterprises gain sales by making higher quality products than competitors. Two generations ago, this was still a cultural / economic dynamic. 

But then everyone with a line of credit bought everything, and so now everyone owns everything. This saturation of all demand means sales can only decline since durable goods last a long time. The only way to juice sales higher is by making insecure consumers crave the latest fashion, but this artifice has limits. 

The solution was to crapify all products and services via planned obsolescence and endless loops of lousy, over-priced service. Products are now designed to be impossible to repair (eliminating cheapskate do-it-yourselfers) and by using the lowest-quality, lowest-cost components, manufacturers guarantee that the entire product will fail once the lowest-quality component fails. 

Discerning consumers have long noted the crapification of ingredients and the accompanying decline of value via shrinkflation. Discerning DIYers have noted how products are sealed, warranties voided, and simple maintenance jobs like changing the oil in a vehicle are now complicated by various perverse means. 

As for service--Corporate America doesn't have to care about poor quality because they know we have no choice. All the members of the cartel offer the same rapacious pricing and pathetically poor service, so no corporation or institution (hospital, university, local government agency, etc.) has to fear a competitor might disrupt the cozy profiteering--there is no real competition in healthcare, higher education, defense contractors, telecom providers, pharmaceuticals, fast food, agribusiness, etc.--none. 

 George Carlin was right, we have no choice.