Comment by bruce511

If an "alternative" to McDonald's does exactly the same abusive thing it isn't a real alternative to McDonald's at all.

If an "alternative" to McDonald's forces you to drive excessive distances to reach it, or it costs much more, or it sells Thai food instead of burgers, then it isn't a real alternative to McDonald's.

A suitable alternative to McDonald's would be one similar enough to McDonald's for your purposes that you can use it to replace McDonald's. I'm sure some people have that, but I'm also sure many people don't.

There are lots of things that don't actually have suitable alternatives. There are entire product categories that are completely filled with consumer hostile garbage, with zero competitors offering a suitable alternative, because sometimes it will always be more profitable for companies to refuse to give consumers what they want.

What if I can't drive all the way to an ad-free restaurant or for that matter an ad-free gas pump? What if I buy a plane ticket to get out of this bad situation and the airline is using the emergency PA to harass their captive audience of paying customers to join their miles club? What can't be avoided must endured, but there is no reason for people like you to insist that this is fine or normal, or that it's something one can opt out of. You're actively building the dystopia when you do that

One of the things that’s surprising about traveling to Europe and Japan is that this revenue maximizing business strategy isn’t as prevalent. You don’t see the same upsells everywhere and tipping culture is also mostly non-existent. Many US businesses managed to behave in a manner that was vastly less extractive to their customers for most of the last century as well. It really is possible to care about the quality of your business in some cultures, it’s just harder to do so here today.

McDonalds has fallen so far in the past few decades. I used to eat there or at least grab a soda several times a week. I never go there anymore. The kiosks suck; I refuse to use them, but they don't staff the counter half the time so there's no other way to order. The drive-thru expects you've already ordered on the app. Fuck that. It's all way too complicated. I want a Big Mac meal with a coke. That used to take me 3 seconds to order and I had it on a tray in about another minute. Now I have to dick around on the kiosk for a couple of minutes, pay, and then wait 5-10 minutes for the food. It's absurd.

> Most small businesses fail of course. Usually because while they do a task well, they're bad at the business part.

Some small businesses fail because larger ones see their initial success and compete by making a slightly worse product a bit cheaper. Sometimes a significantly worse product. Once the superior but smaller competition is either out of business or has been forced to reduce their quality to try compete on price, the bigger business can either reduce the quality & price further (the big business will usually win in this sort of race-to-the-bottom because they can afford to take losses on individual products for a time, where a smaller business cannot) or bump their price up to improve margins.

It sometimes isn't that the small business is bad at the business part, but that they refuse to play dirty even if playing dirty is the only way to compete. It is easier to rationalise some tactics in a bigger company, because there is no one who has to look the customer in the eye who is also making product quality affecting decisions.