Cold card cash. You, the ones who pay them and use their products, are not the customer. You are a commodity to be leveraged for their actual customers: the shareholders. They’re not competing with Samsung or Microsoft for your direct dollars, there competing with them (and everyone from Pepsi to Amazon to Home Depot) for shareholder investment, which is driven not just by making money this year just like they did last, but my making MORE money than they did last year, otherwise the investors will move their money somewhere that DOES make them more.

This is the cog dis I have with capitalism. I love having savings and a place where I can keep it that makes me more than a few percentage points of interest, on the other hand, it diffuses and distracts companies from making the best product they can and making you as happy as possible. What should be the end goal is simply a means to the actual end goal, and if they can achieve the same or better actual end goal (it being ROI), by shaving cost or cutting out some quality or additional benefits, after doing thorough analysis to see how many customers they’ll lose and if it’s worth it because in the end they’ll get more investment, they’ll do it.

I cringe when a product I like goes public, because it invariably means I will soon no longer be happy with it.