#mfn

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/25/most-favored-nation/#price-fixing

Selling on Amazon is a tough business. Sure, you can reach a lot of customers, but this comes at a very high price: the junk fees that Amazon extracts from its sellers amount to 50-60% of the price you pay.

That's a hell of a lot of money to hand over to a middleman, but it's not like vendors have much choice. The vast majority of America's affluent households are Prime subscribers (depending on how you define "affluent household" it's north of 90%). Prime households prepay for a year's worth of shipping, so it's only natural that they start their shopping on Amazon, where they've already paid the delivery costs. And because Amazon reliably meets or beats the prices you'd pay elsewhere, Prime subscribers who find a product on Amazon overwhelmingly stop their shopping at Amazon, too.

At this point you might be thinking a couple things:

I. Why not try to sell the non-affluent households, who are far less likely to subscribe to Prime? and

II. If Amazon has the lowest prices, what's the problem if everyone shops there?

The answers to these two questions are intimately related, as it happens.

Let's start with selling to non-affluent households – basically, the bottom 90% of American earners. The problem here is that everyone who isn't in that top 10% is pretty goddamned broke. It's not just decades of wage stagnation and hyperinflation in health, housing and education costs. It's also that every economic crisis of this century has resulted in a "K-shaped" recovery, in which "economic recovery" means that rich people are doing fine, while everyone else is worse off than they were before the crisis.

For decades, America papered over the K-shaped hole in its economy with debt. First it was credit cards. Then it was gimmicky mortgages – home equity lines of credit, second mortgages and reverse mortgages. Then it was payday lenders. Then it was "buy-now/pay-later" services that let you buy lunch at Chipotle on an installment plan that is nominally interest-free, but is designed to trap the unwary and unlucky with massive penalties if you miss a single payment.

This produced a median American who isn't just cash-poor – they are cash-negative, drowning in debt. And – with the exception of a brief Biden intercession – every presidential administration of the 21st century has enacted policies that favor creditors over debtors. Bankruptcy is harder to declare, and creditors can hit you with effectively unlimited penalties and confiscation of your property and wages once your cash is gone. Trump has erased all the small mercies of the Biden years – for example, he just forced 8,000,000 student borrowers back into repayment:

https://prospect.org/2025/12/16/gop-forcing-eight-million-student-loan-borrowers-into-repayment/

The average American worker has $955 saved for retirement:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/955-saved-for-retirement-millions-are-in-that-boat-150003868.html

There's plenty to worry about in a K-shaped economy – big things like "political instability" and "cultural chaos" (the fact that most people are broke has a lot to do with the surging fortunes of gambling platforms). But from a seller's perspective, the most important impact of the K-shaped economy is that only rich people buy stuff. Selling to the bottom 90% is a losing proposition because they're increasingly too broke to buy anything:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/16/k-shaped-recovery/#disenshittification-nations

Combine the fact that the richest 10% of Americans all start their shopping on Amazon with the fact that no one else can afford to buy anything, and it's easy to see why merchants would stay on Amazon, even when junk fees hit 60%.

MFN huh…. *takes a long drag of a cigarette* Haven’t heard that name in a long… LONG time….

I’m assuming that ur talking about my old opposite au lol

THIS was my Opp! Ricky design lol

Aaaa going down memory lane!

I made these in 2023 i believe! Goodness that feels like such a long time ago…

this game is most definitely a cut above all the other mascot horror games/franchises -- because instead of having the overused "childrens' souls stuffed into mascot bodies", the puppets are just naturally sentient. not only that, but the MFN TV show within the game teaches you how to be a friendly neighbor, and the game focuses on humanity itself and how people/humans would unfortunately rather ignore their issues, forget about kindness and friendliness, and stop watching those fun and lively and educational shows (and even prevent their kids from watching it) because it "makes them uncomfy" and reminds them of "how messed up they [really] are", reminds them of how hard they find it to stay positive in such dark times. they'd rather shy away towards darker and "less friendly" TV programmes just to distract themselves from how bleak and miserable the world is.

sounds an awful lot like society now tbh.

no wonder FNAF and whatnot are so popular. i guess people saw how MFN touches on the subject of war and finding humanity through kindness and were like "....nnnnnno ima stick with the overly extensive lore of scary animatronics with experimented kids' souls stuffed inside of them." lol.

you see where im going with this, right?

the point is, MFN is so overlooked. what many people don't even realise (and it annoys me that this particular detail is so ignored) is that the puppets in MFN have been alone and abandoned for 10 years, trapped in the studio with nothing but their own thoughts and each other, causing their slightly insane spiral. but they don't wanna hurt you. they want a hug ffs. and despite all this, the player as gordon can help them and restart their show, and give them a better life again, out of the kindness of his/their heart. as a result, gordon himself finds a "light", a guiding goodness, all because he helped the puppets revive their show about friendliness, a show that didn't deserve to be cancelled, a show that ended because people wanted darker programmes, and didn't want to be shown the light.

to me MFN is so important and its messages are more relevant now more than ever:

we have to remember to be kind and friendly towards one another, and to step out of our dark living rooms away from the TV (or our phone screens, in this era's case) so we can find some kind of light with the people we care about. we're so caught up with stress, with negativity, with numbers and money, to the point where many of us may take it out on others, to the point where we become trapped in that dark place. might sound emo, but it's true. yes, the world has gone to shit. yes there's wars and death and all the things that make you want to stay at home and sit on the couch and distract yourself.

but there is light, i promise. you have to keep in mind the good things in your life - your friends, family, loved ones. even if it's a material thing, like your hobbies & interests. or the kind words someone once said to you a while ago. you just have to allow yourself to open up to that light, allow yourself to open up to others. even you helping others in need of support will allow that light in.

remember to be kind. to others, and to yourself.

Close up beneath the cut !!

I'M BACK!!!

Been playing a lot of My Friendly Neighborhood.

lighting practice i did featuring pearl. the one and only