Great read, I think you illuminate a very interesting contradiction, that quality has relatively little to do with profit and profitability. It definitely jives with some stuff I find very useful for understanding the history and progression of capitalism, particularly Toni Negri and others' conception of dead labour and "extraction". My favourite way of putting this is that workers were "freed" by capitalism, in that they were freed of traditional ties to things like land or property, and instead were made these free entities that could be bought and sold. I think you see the same thing going on in these successive stages you've outlined, the consumer is progressively "freed" of qualities like free food, and eventually reliable service. Nowhere is this more obvious than the internet, where we've basically rehearsed British enclosure acts in cyberspace. Negri et al's (Terranova is part of this school as well) solution is rather similar to yours, worker autonomism.
Great read, I think you illuminate a very interesting contradiction, that quality has relatively little to do with profit and profitability. It definitely jives with some stuff I find very useful for understanding the history and progression of capitalism, particularly Toni Negri and others' conception of dead labour and "extraction". My favourite way of putting this is that workers were "freed" by capitalism, in that they were freed of traditional ties to things like land or property, and instead were made these free entities that could be bought and sold. I think you see the same thing going on in these successive stages you've outlined, the consumer is progressively "freed" of qualities like free food, and eventually reliable service. Nowhere is this more obvious than the internet, where we've basically rehearsed British enclosure acts in cyberspace. Negri et al's (Terranova is part of this school as well) solution is rather similar to yours, worker autonomism.
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