{"id":64895,"date":"2023-01-29T07:06:55","date_gmt":"2023-01-29T12:06:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64895"},"modified":"2023-01-29T07:06:55","modified_gmt":"2023-01-29T12:06:55","slug":"the-race-to-the-bottom-accelerates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64895","title":{"rendered":"The Race to the Bottom Accelerates"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"post-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/charleshughsmith.blogspot.com\/2023\/01\/the-race-to-bottom-accelerates.html\">The Race to the Bottom Accelerates<\/a><\/h3>\n<div id=\"post-7619986069584965740\" class=\"post-body\">\n<p><i>When competence, transparency and accountability are all punished, the\u00a0Race to the Bottom\u00a0accelerates.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Race to the Bottom<\/i>\u00a0describes the process of\u00a0<i>competitive devaluation<\/i><\/b>, where value is gutted to remain competitive with those who are grabbing market share by stripping out quality, value, durability, transparency, accountability and competence.<\/p>\n<p><b>We see the global\u00a0<i>Race to the Bottom<\/i>\u00a0in everyday products:<\/b>\u00a0the quality of goods has plummeted as manufacturers compete to reduce costs to maintain high profit margins by stripping out the quality and durability of components. We see it in\u00a0<i>shrinkflation<\/i>, where the cereal box contains less cereal while the price ratchets higher.<\/p>\n<p><b>We see it when cereals that once contained no sugar are now sickly-sweet<\/b>\u00a0because the manufacturer is losing market share to less healthy sugar-bomb cereals.<\/p>\n<p><b>We see it in healthcare<\/b>\u00a0where costs have been so ruthlessly stripped out to boost profits that it takes months to get an appointment and overworked caregivers no longer have the &#8220;luxury&#8221; of providing the care they were trained to provide. Routine procedures and hospital stays now carry pricetags equal to four years college tuition or a modest house.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<i>Race to the Bottom<\/i>\u00a0isn&#8217;t limited to goods and services. Consider the bedrock of the social order,\u00a0<i>civility<\/i>. Civility in discourse is now rarer than sightings of UFOs \/ UAPs.<\/p>\n<p><b>In politics, scoring cheap points while ignoring the nation&#8217;s social decay and unsustainable bubble economy is another example of the\u00a0<i>Race to the Bottom<\/i><\/b>. Is getting to the bottom of the Taylor Swift ticketing &#8220;fiasco&#8221; really the most pressing issue that politicians need to address? It would seem so.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Race to the Bottom Accelerates When competence, transparency and accountability are all punished, the\u00a0Race to the Bottom\u00a0accelerates. Race to the Bottom\u00a0describes the process of\u00a0competitive devaluation, where value is gutted to remain competitive with those who are grabbing market share by stripping out quality, value, durability, transparency, accountability and competence. We see the global\u00a0Race to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24078,951,1099,587,33646],"class_list":["post-64895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-charles-hugh-smith-2","tag-currency","tag-currency-devaluation","tag-of-two-minds","tag-race-to-the-bottom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64896,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64895\/revisions\/64896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}