Every major agricultural product has failed. Animal products aren’t well sold either. American wool was an entire industry. Tobacco we know why. Alfalfa is too expensive and killing feed. Crop after crop has gone away. We have corn and soy left which we have industrialized. They make extremely low quality sugars and oils. The lowest quality of those products tbh. They’re excellent for nutrition in third world countries. Not so much for developed ones and we can all look outside at our neighbors to prove that. They’re huge. Obese. Horrible health markers.
The cars are overpriced and not a good product either. The manufacturers had their lunch ate in the 1980s and now they look for ridiculous margins by selling the most oversized and inefficient vehicles possible to keep themselves alive. The government is the only thing stopping their full collapse, but the consumer is still demanding small electric cars from a different country. The government can’t control consumer choice.
The great wave of cannabis got zero people raised up from low wages even though it was selling like crazy.
Software engineering and hardware manufacturing are long gone and we don’t need proof on that.
Music simply isn’t sold on a mass scale anymore unless it’s generated by a hive and sung or performed by a person who is only a prop. Absolutely zero record stores around.
Furniture? Non existent.
Clothing? Only made for Hollywood and the rest from Bangladesh or Vietnam. Haven’t seen a tailor shop in a few decades.
Toys? We don’t have kids that “play” anymore so toys and toy stores are long gone. Even online.
Everything my eyes point to was made better somewhere else. I think it’s time to admit that the system won’t get us ahead. It’s not doing anything for anybody. Give it whatever name you want but its our system and it doesn’t work.
Re: car manufacturing, and manufacturing in general. Part of it is literally every piece of the puzzle is more complicated now, and it raises the minimum capital floor. You have to have hundreds of millions for the people, the supply chains, the logistics, the legal and regulatory oversight, the distribution, etc. And you have to do that under fierce global competition. Few have that kind of access and want to make such a gamble. So what happens is, progress is left to established players. All roads of capitalism lead to entrenched financial power.
But the other part of your post is just wrong. People are still buying cars. Its just not growing as fast, but every year new cars are made and sold, even at “overpriced” rates. Because people need cars and debt is cheap now. An expensive future is hard to conceptualize. All finance people understand that and prey on poor human intuition.
Products are also not “worse” despite the zeitgeist. Most products have to survive harsher operating conditions and use. They generally need to support features that consumers demand that make them more complicated compared to the past (small wires, computers, more energy efficient designs, more complexity, brittle software).
Re cannabis: industrialization rarely helps workers. Employee-owned large businesses are far and few between. They can be successful but it’s not a given. I would like to see more, but this isn’t a new thing.
Software and hardware engineering are gone? You’re just wrong. How about doing some research instead of living in your news bubble. Despite layoffs, despite AI, the industry is still growing. The demand has never been higher. Its just there’s that many more people available for the roles.
Why would there be any record stores? Nobody wants to buy records. They are inconvenient. I am finding new artists all the time. Independent artists have access to a global audience on some of these channels. How is that not “mass scale”. That global scale may not make them filthy rich, but there are tons of artists traveling internationally for smaller venue concerts to supplement the smaller streaming income. This is also a natural consequence of the population growth. Hundreds of millions of people have hundreds of thousands of options, making competition to “get big” more difficult. You’re being intentionally obtuse if you think music isn’t way bigger than it was decades ago.
Furniture makers and furniture stores are everywhere. The issue is inflation, increases in cost of living, and expectations. Nobody wants heavy furniture from their parents and grandparents anymore. Some furniture is handed down, but generally second generation children don’t need their grandparents furniture – they’ve already moved out and need to buy their own. People need cheap furniture at younger ages. So the demand just keeps rising for cheap, flat packed builds.
There’s toy stores everywhere, they just have new names that don’t say “toy store”. Do you have kids? Do your siblings have kids? There’s plenty of stores selling toys. They are garbage toys though and part of that is the influence of media. But it was no different 30+ years ago. Theyve just changed the media manipulation from action heros to tiny widgets.
I generally agree the system is not good, but I feel like you’re not raising a meaningful discussion. Its just “the world is not the same, old man shakes fist at clouds”. I mean… complaining about records heh.