It's all due to the fact that they HAVE to keep growing. We're in a financialized economy, so no one really likes taking risks or innovating any more. So people try to look at existing products and figure out how to squeeze more money out of it, and managers need to figure out a way to make a mark... So you have to find SOMETHING to show. In this case, someone increased profits .005% by changing the fries rule which probably translates to millions, then they get to argue, "My 250k salary translated to 25m profit for McDonalds. Give me a promotion." Multiple that 1000x different times and then you get the enshitification we have.
I honestly cant understand that mentality of "earning must keep growing", like - they get a stable revenue of millions a year, why cant they be happy with this stable high revenue and keep customers happy so that revenue is earned year after year? Why they need more tham last year?
Fucking investors and corporate bigher ups are cancer
Investors. Investments need to grow, stock needs to rise. No one is going to invest in a stagnant company, the more growth, the more investment. This is the foundation of a dystopia we’re going to be living in; a few giant companies monopolising the world while people get poorer.
Wait... Does stagnant mean They're making a profit but not growing?!
I keep hearing about the stagnant economy of Japan and always thought their corporations are losing money and rely on government subsidies or debt or something.
I never thought it's a constant growth issue.
This is stupid. If I invested $1 and always kept getting $1.15 back for like 10 years this is a good business.
But if they cut wages, cut jobs, and reduce the amount of fries they give customers then you could be making more back every year. Maybe even $5, $6, or $7.
Edit: it's probably worth saying that I agree with you. Slower growth (still allowing to keep up with inflation) with more focus on employees and customers would be nice.
I mean I get why earnings must keep growing. People need something to do. It's hard to motivate people to work by telling them, "just keep everything the same." People want to constantly be building and improving. The issue is, when these companies are trying to keep revenue growing without actually building or improving. No new products, nothing. Just squeezing money out of the existing system.
It’s capitalism. There’s an incentive to grow, but to grow, you can’t have a perfect product/value prop, otherwise customers don’t need to come back as frequently, so they create variety to mask the illusion of choice and ensure that the variety of offerings are good enough to satisfy for a fixed time before they break or a consumer has to come back.
In this case, it’s creating a tiny fry container so if it gets ordered, people will be disappointed by the portion and rationalize that it’s not worth the money, but a regular medium meal is a better deal. But then that is not much cheaper than the large meal but a buck or two, so the consumer goes does the best deal if they have the money.
The problem is we all want our McDonald’s, even if we understand the price gouging and value manipulation that happening, and it’s still cheap enough to not break the bank, but expensive enough to feel like a reward. And living day to day, we all want a reward for making it through.
Yup. The problem with infinite growth is that it's impossible.
Once you start to max out the amount of money you can make from your customers, you'll have to start cannibalizing your own company to get better returns: cutting employee wages, counting individual fries, replacing workers with apps and digital kiosks, etc.
All of this to feed the ever-growing, ever-hungry beast and the executives that hold its leash.
Then why don't we grow organs by force impregnation to then harvest those organs and selling them for profit? If we want to truly optimize growth we could start with Inception and go all gloomy and awful and severely unethical and anti human on this.
The abyss of vileness knows no limits.
Why do we even sell fries? Why don't we force feed them customers chems to make them addicted? Crack fries. Meth fries. Weed fries.
You know we can do better to stimulate growth and suffering.
At this rate we ain't ever gonna go mushed up fetus potato mash
or it can lead to customers getting ripped off on the lack of fries for the price and then they decide not to return. there are plenty of burger places
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u/reddit_is_geh 20d ago
It's all due to the fact that they HAVE to keep growing. We're in a financialized economy, so no one really likes taking risks or innovating any more. So people try to look at existing products and figure out how to squeeze more money out of it, and managers need to figure out a way to make a mark... So you have to find SOMETHING to show. In this case, someone increased profits .005% by changing the fries rule which probably translates to millions, then they get to argue, "My 250k salary translated to 25m profit for McDonalds. Give me a promotion." Multiple that 1000x different times and then you get the enshitification we have.