I buy straight from brands I trust whenever possible, not even trusting Amazon as an intermediary between us. Those brands aren't selling alibaba-dropshipper stuff.
I'd say my trust in stores that sell more than their own brand is at an all-time low. You have enshittifying mid-range department stores where you can't trust a thing, fake "outlet" stores, et c. I sort-of trust REI. I sort-of trust Costco. End of list, maybe?
Like if there's value being delivered in the "trusted source" sphere for a general retailer, I'm not seeing much of it. Quite the opposite, that's all gotten worse steadily this century.
parasitic would be a one-way setup where only the cigarette provider benefits
Luckily, our economy is mostly based on luxury items, by world standards.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with producing entertainment, internet communities, or branded merch. But I don't think it's that controversial to say "micro-influencer selling/sponsoring merch" is not the optimal career path for most of the people that pursue it.
There are certainly things wrong with today's economy, starting with housing being treated as a financial asset, which encourages laws that create an artificial scarcity of it. I'm not saying there is nothing to complain about.
But the fact that not everyone is working purely to create necessities, that some of our economic output consists of luxuries? I don't really see that as a problem to be solved. If anything, I think it's a good sign. Let's not fall into the trap of just randomly complaining about everything.
A common refrain is that all the "entrepreneurs" are just gig economy workers, and I was initially skeptical of this too, but it does seem to check out. The top industries with aren't related to gig economy or truckers, in fact that industry shrunk.
https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20260801_EPC...
What's surprising is how many people (seemingly) work there (hundreds!), for a publication that puts out like 70 articles per week? They got 9 people working on china and the china section only has 3-4 articles per week.
Absolutely. https://www.wsj.com/business/making-money-wealth-boring-8cc6...
Getting off the ground with a small business in America stinks in a lot of ways. Taxes are high and health insurance is really expensive when you have to cover it yourself.
Not necessarily, often it is much less.
t. I am a partner in an L&H insurance agency.
Universal healthcare is the healthy paying for the sick, which while altruistic is what's actually expensive.
1) the jobs act introduced a toxic R&D code from 2022-2025
2) tariffs with no reasonable means of manufacturing domestically and inhibited developing production lines with the prior tax code fiasco
bookofjoe•1h ago