Substack would not let me cross-post this article about enshittification. Isn't that interesting?

So I am posting the summary and giving you the link to the video

Click the link below for the video:

Consolidation and the quiet collapse of quality

This week on the Collapse Life podcast we are joined by Keyana Sapp, whose research into corporate ownership started with a simple observation: why did his new backpack feel nothing like the one he’d owned for ages?

That question led him into a much bigger story about consolidation, stewardship, and what happens when reputation becomes something to buy and sell instead of something to earn.

Sapp’s research project, Worse on Purpose, traces the ownership histories behind hundreds of familiar brands, revealing how acquisitions, private equity, and corporate consolidation can fundamentally change the products we thought we knew.

But the conversation goes well beyond consumer complaints to discuss why quality matters in an era of fragile supply chains, why repairing rather than replacing may become a survival skill, and how our relationship with the objects we own has quietly changed over the past generation.

Collapse Life is about understanding what happens as systems become more brittle and complex — and this episode examines one of the most tangible ways that brittleness and complexity is already showing up — in the backpack on your shoulder, the appliance in your kitchen, and the tools in your garage.

Have you noticed a product or brand that simply isn’t what it used to be? What changed — and do you think consolidation played a role?

Relevant links:

• Worse on Purpose

• The Brand Ledger

• Post: The Mechanisms of Enshittification

• Keyana Sapp on X

---