[bsder]

> I realize that I’m probably going to get dogpiled for saying it, but I think that the response to COVID (ie lockdowns) did far more damage than the disease itself.

You're going to blame Covid and/or Covid response for the fact that monopolies can jack up prices without consequence? That's your conclusion? Seriously?

What's happened is that McDonald's assumed they were a monopoly supplier like everybody else and jacked prices. McDonald's unfortunately discovered that "not eating out at all" is a viable substitute to their monopoly. Whoops.

However, if you want to fix the enshittification that is going on, you need to aggressively break up the monopolies everywhere in order to insert slack back into the system to re-enable competition.

On top of that, basing everything around "Always Late(tm) Inventory" (aka "Just In Time Inventory") means that there is zero slack in the system so even IF you want to compete, there is no upstream provider that can supply you with enough material to make a meaningful difference.

Want to fix modern capitalism? Bust monopolies. Over and over. At all levels. In all fields (not just tech). Aggressively.