Somewhere recently, I think it was L M Sacasas who wrote about the Tyranny of Tiny Tasks, which daily activity I seem to remember from my days managing administratia for The Public. Lots of busy work functioning at not very much of use. I'm pretty sure that there's insight to be found as well from Thomas Piketty's observations* about the manner in which financialism comes to rely upon just moving money around and making it seem scarce once all the coal / lead / gold / cheap land has been mined out and sold. But I do think that Doctorow's termification of the tendency, "Enshittification" rolls more easily off the tongue than say, "Financialist Monetarism". And certainly more attention getting.
Tim Long
*I appreciated Piketty's use of Balzac and Austen's novels to describe the conversion of some money into more money without having to actually, say, plant and harvest crops.
Somewhere recently, I think it was L M Sacasas who wrote about the Tyranny of Tiny Tasks, which daily activity I seem to remember from my days managing administratia for The Public. Lots of busy work functioning at not very much of use. I'm pretty sure that there's insight to be found as well from Thomas Piketty's observations* about the manner in which financialism comes to rely upon just moving money around and making it seem scarce once all the coal / lead / gold / cheap land has been mined out and sold. But I do think that Doctorow's termification of the tendency, "Enshittification" rolls more easily off the tongue than say, "Financialist Monetarism". And certainly more attention getting.
Tim Long
*I appreciated Piketty's use of Balzac and Austen's novels to describe the conversion of some money into more money without having to actually, say, plant and harvest crops.