Everything you described falls under the umbrella of Capitalism.
Capitalism will always result in this sort of devolution, because it rewards this sort of behavior.
Constant GDP growth fuels capitalist enterprises because valuations go up and Capital is expanded. That incentivizes governments to make access to Capital easier and regulations on growth looser, which the firms themselves favor in terms of lower taxes, cheaper loans, larger capital markets, etc.
How many business leaders lobby, vote, and push for higher general taxes, stronger labor rights, stricter regulations, and more expensive loans?
The only time you’ll see them doing any of those things, is when it directly hurts one of their major competitors.
This makes perfect sense within a Capitalist framework, because private ownership of the means of production and increasing profitability are literally the core of Capitalism. So of course Capitalists will always tend towards what makes the most money.
All the worst traits of modern Capitalism, (Everything is a subscription, planned obsolescence, shrinkflation, extreme litigiousness over patents and copyrights, ads in everything, predatory pricing & monetization) are the logical result of a Capitalist system.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 1 week ago
You can have late stage capitalism with any monetary system. Though relying on inherent value tends to leave poor people in much worse conditions much more quickly.
maplesaga@lemmy.world 1 week ago
If anything it seems more like crony capitalism, when the CPI is understated and all investments are excluded it drives down borrowing rates and bond yields, which raises stock values and provides a stream of revenue with those with the largest access to the most credit. People like Elon Musk who avoid paying taxes by borrowing cheap debt, which who would lend him when his collateral is Tesla stock, which is entirely built on speculation and pumps to new all time highs whenever QE is unloaded into the market.