[ffsm8]

The reason why whaling and government contracts are increasingly the best options available is because the wealth from the working class has mostly been extracted... And with less and less disposable wealth available to the populous, targeting them for products gets increasingly competitive as anything non essential gets ignored

It's a negative feedback loop, and the politicians would rather reduce taxes on the rich then reverse that trend

At least that's how it looks to me

[ryandrake]

The sad reality is that 80-90% of us are simply no longer economically relevant to $Trillion dollar companies. Even if we were paying customers, each of our total lifetime values is a rounding error on these guys' balance sheets. An individual could swear off Company X, and it wouldn't even be noticed, not even by someone deliberately looking for the economic impact of losing a customer.