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The problem with tech market profits is that it is beginning to dawn on users that it is they who are being used. Apparently, everybody has to relearn the first law of consumerism, nothing is free. And the second law is, nothing is safe.

You said that many tech companies were "desperate to find ways to deliver better returns for their clients." That is a big lie. The only think that any company is desperate to do is to turn a profit. And everyone should understand that and to expect it. After all, that is what drives any economy.

The weakness of that is it is often more money to be made, at least in the short term, cheating clients and abusing them than in giving them better returns. If I learned anything in business school, it is that corporations make more money in manipulating their stock prices than in making and selling product.

Tech companies rake in most of their income from selling advertisements and selling their users' personal information to those advertisers and, especially since 911, to governments, both domestic and foreign. All companies have cut costs by outsourcing labor to countries who keep labor costs down by keeping they subjects in slave-like condition.

The second cost cutting strategy is to eliminate customer service. The first step in that was to outsource help desks to India, Indonesia and China. After enough people quit calling for help out of frustration with inability to communicate with the people answering the calls, they could just quit providing a call-in number completely.

I suspect that the prime use that tech companies use software engineers for is to hack users' computers and other electronic devices to enhance the information they gather from their clients and from their competitors. One of the most lucrative businesses is with the two major political parties, for they will do anything to get their candidates elected and re-elected. There are trillions of dollars to be milked from the seven plus billions of governed people in our world.

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