It's fascinating how little education there is in America about economics, specifically macroeconomics.

For example, people have noticed all the monetization efforts of big tech lately. Most seem to attribute it to "capitalism", which is also accurate, but it doesn't explain why this is happening now.

We were living under capitalism for a long time and we didn't see these moves to this degree across many companies.

People don't seem to notice that the cause is The Fed raising interest rates.

Once you make the connection, it's impossible to unsee.

I'll skip the fractional reserve banking system explanation, but the punchline is that when the Fed raises rates, all other lenders do so as well (banks, credit unions, venture capitalists, etc.).

This means no more cheap loans, which means companies what were growing and not profitable because they hadn't captured enough market share yet are in a pickle.

They have more bills to pay than money coming in. Ergo, layoffs, price hikes, etc.

That seems like the Fed is being pretty mean, right? Had they not raised rates, companies could have kept growing on schedule, paid back their loans, and there wouldn't be so many lay offs and enshittification.

So why'd they do it? Inflation.

What was the goal? To get wages down. And that's not my opinion, or some conspiracy theory. It's their stated goal.

https://mronline.org/2022/05/26/u-s-federal-reserve-says-its-goal-is-to-get-wages-down/

Now that sound even more mean, right?

They do have reasons, but that's a thread for another day.