Forgive Us Our Enshittification

Jesus died for our debt, not our sins

Corey Doctorow explains "Enshittification":

"Here is how (software, i.e. social media) platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them."

It's *necessary* to rake off an ever larger share because of the requirements that Usury has imposed on the markets.

In The Merchant Of Venice, Shakespeare has Shylock complain of Antonio,

"In low simplicity he lends out money gratis, and brings down
The rate of usance here with us in Venice."

Antonio risks losing his fortune, and so the markets discipline anyone who does not generate a high enough return on money or any investments.

According to The History Of Usury Prohibition,

"Usury is what marks the distinction between money being simply a socially contracted abstract mechanism to lubricate between supply and demand, and money as an end in itself.  As an end in itself, as a social commodity legitimised through usury to tax other economic activity, the honest process of living by the sweat of one’s brow is short-circuited.  The true dignity and full reward of ordinary labour is compromised.  Money thus becomes self-perpetuating power in itself rather than just a mediating agent of power.  And it is the relentlessness of compound interest in the face of adversity that sets the potential cruelty of usury apart from equity-based return on investment."

According to Marx,

"Usury centralizes money wealth where the means of production are dispersed. It does not alter the mode of production, but attaches itself firmly to it like a parasite and makes it wretched. It sucks out its blood, enervates it and compels reproduction to proceed under ever more pitiable conditions. Hence the popular hatred against usurers, which was most pronounced in the ancient world where ownership of means of production by the producer himself was at the same time the basis for political status, the independence of the citizen."

So usury centralizes wealth and hence society, undermines the independence of the citizen, and leads to tyranny.  In other words, it enshittifies.

Of course the history of all this goes all the way back beyond when Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple.

Michael Hudson has an interesting view of this.

“Most religious leaders say that Christianity is all about sin, not debt, but actually, the word for sin and debt is the same in almost every language.

...

People tend to think of the Commandment ‘do not covet your neighbour’s wife’ in purely sexual terms but actually, it refers specifically to creditors who would force the wives and daughters of debtors into sex slavery as collateral for unpaid debt.

This goes all the way back to Sumer in the third millennium.

Similarly, the Commandment ‘thou shalt not steal’ refers to usury and exploitation by threat for debts owing. Jesus was crucified for his views on debt. Crucifixion being a punishment reserved especially for political dissidents.

To understand the crucifixion of Jesus is to understand it was his punishment for his economic views. He was a threat to the creditors.

Jesus Christ was a socialist activist for the continuity of regular debt jubilees that were considered essential to the wellbeing of ancient economies."

So, seriously, we must ask God to forgive us our enshittification, and we must find a path away from it.