Corporate Greed.

Corporations are reaching deeper into our pockets, their goal seemingly to bring our disposable income to zero dollars. Leftover cash at the end of the month is money on the table and the impression I get is that corporations feel entitled to that money.

This is how they are doing it.

Addiction
Services and products provided have been tweaked and manipulated to manipulate us and to maximize time on the product. This isn't possible for all products, see the next section for those.

Single Use
They can't addict you to hairbrushes, but they sure can design replaceable garbage. This is time consuming to replace, expensive in the long run and soul draining dealing with constantly low quality experiences with our products.

Eliminating Ownership
There are now laws on the book that make it difficult or illegal to maintain, take apart, or use your product in ways it was not intended.

Some products are now available digitally and you don't own them. They are licensed to you which means they can take them away (paid for or not) any time they want to.

Control the Channel
Once the product is eliminated.. once you are not allowed to use the product unless by license and only in specific ways.. these corporations are now in a position to control access and monetize it. This has happened to everything from tractors and dating apps. Yes that's right sex is now pay gated if you use an app. This is the subscription model at its worst.

If the corporation is a distributor it gets even better. If you are a middleman then you can squeeze both ends.

Maximize Profit
Once it is monetized they can raise prices higher and higher. Some of us still have a positive disposable income which means we will basically pay higher prices when forced upon us. A great example of this is PG&E in California which has raised rates over and over making energy prices in northern California very, very expensive.

Giving on the Front, Taking on the Back
This still wasn't enough. If it's possible to take multiple, parallel revenue streams from you they will.

The most lucrative model I am aware of is selling personal data. Many corporations provide excellent services and they collect data on you to improve their service and to provide a personalized experience. This is fantastic until you find out that they also take that data and sell it to other firms.

I don't want to blame all corporations, there are good actors or at least benign or just mildly evil actors. But they are the exception. The patterns above are irresponsible, inhuman, inappropriate and just plain wrong.