EP 989 The Annoyance Economy is Costing All of Us Time and Money

We are all in the doom loop of what has become known as the ‘annoyance economy’.  You know the drill–long hold times on calls and the ‘friendly’ AI assistant unwilling to get you to a human, hidden junk fees, voluminous spam offers, health insurance wrangling that pits you against health care giants, corporate-friendly cancellation processes that are designed to make you throw up your hands and pay the damn bill regardless of the validity of your claim, airline policies from ‘budget’ carriers that are anything but (and it’s impossible to navigate their websites or talk to a human) and subscriptions that seemingly never end.  While it may be a source of amusement in conversations with friends, the projected costs to us in time and money are projected to be $165 billion a year. The frustrations are becoming so universal, based on the polling, that some politician who wants to run on these issues would have a powerful platform. Joining us today to discuss the ever- growing annoyance economy is Juliana Kaplan, a senior labor and inequality reporter at BUSINESS INSIDER.  You’ll serve as an amen choir once we point out the abuses that create frustrations beyond measure in today’s fast digitizing economy.  By the way the term itself annoyance economy, was coined by Neale Mahoney, a Stanford economist, and Chad Maisel, a policy fellow at Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive research organization.

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