The internet was supposed to open doors, not close them.
On The Ezra Klein Show, Cory Doctorow and Tim Wu argue that platform design has systematically degraded the digital commons. The result is enshittification, a process where user value is extracted to serve shareholders. Doctorow says the feeling of brokenness isn't nostalgia, it's accurate. When he sees a problem now, he assumes it's by design and impossible to fix. This engineered fatalism erodes agency.
That loss of agency has a real-world counterpart in career paralysis. On Modern Wisdom, Bill Gurley cites surveys showing roughly 70% of professionals would choose a different career if they could start over. Gurley attributes this to the 'education-to-career conveyor belt,' a system that creates loss aversion and traps people on a path they've invested in.
These are two sides of the same coin. The digital environment teaches us problems are baked-in and we are powerless. That mindset then infects our material lives, making the idea of jumping off a predetermined track seem impossible.
The antidote, according to both perspectives, is rejecting determinism. For Doctorow, it's breaking platform monopolies to restore competition and user power. For Gurley, it's using tools like the 'regret minimization framework' to psychologically close the open loops of paths not taken.
Our tools are supposed to empower us. When they instead teach us helplessness, the lesson spreads.
Cory Doctorow, The Ezra Klein Show:
- I think when I was a lurker on the early internet and I saw things that sucked, I would think someone's going to fix this and maybe it could be me.
- And now when I see bad things on the internet, I'm like, this is by design and it cannot be fixed because you would be violating the rules if you even tried.
