Capitalism is a strong ideology in the United States of America. It's part of the foundation of the American Dream, allowing families, friends and individuals to build and create their own etchings into the world - all while exercising modern human rights. The bad part of capitalism is that monopolies can grow to control industries, money, information and ultimately, people's lives. One example that comes to mind is Google. While Google has a wide range of products and services that they offer in their ecosystem, their most popular product is Search, which is essentially a blackbox to navigate the web. However, since this blackbox is so widely used, every little detail is its inner workings and presentation matter. If a website doesn't have the correct meta attributes applied to it, it loses traffic from SEO ranking. If the algorithm decides to prioritize certain websites, then these websites gain power and influence due to "winning" the search blackbox game.
Not only is information control and exposure important with regards to capitalism, but general consumerism is as well. I hope I'm not the only one who has a strong love/hate relationship with shopping. I can get sucked into an hour of browsing the Shop app, from exotic smelling candles to luxury ceramics to bobbleheads of various people. It's a fun way to pass time while learning new means that people are making entrepreneurial strides in commerce. While a lot of quality products are out there, they can be see easily overshadowed by brands and logos.
Logos are iconic. A sneaker can not sell at all, but once a Nike logo is slapped onto it, it's a hot commodity. However, a shoe that is more performant may not be as appealing since it doesn't have that Nike logo (Example: Brooks). Quality can easily be undermined from mob mentality and wanting to have flashy branding, but will that change in the future. Physical consumer goods are just a composition of atoms, and making these goods could one day be automated. What value will a logo have then? If all that's needed to "print" a designer sweatshirt is a STL file, what makes apparel special then? If synthetic flavoring can be added that matches the longer process with more overhead (ie. properly decomposing and editing wine molecules vs aging wine in a barrel), will the old norms of what's sought after shift?
Keeping those in mind amid the terrors in Ukraine 💖