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Printers have been a nightmare in this country for quite some time. They are, frankly, dicks. Among the shitty things they do, is to make printers that don't work, and they also make it impossible for third party manufacturers to make ink. This have been going on for 30 years and they started the enshittification trend we have seen in tech again and again. Capitalism was supposed to compensate, but Brother, the one 'good' manufacturer in printers now appears to be doing the same thing (they deny it but I mean, we're talking a tech bro company here; they are almost all satanic.) I have never seen anyone say this, but I do have to wonder if one of the reasons they have a captive audience is the federal government requiring them to put a microscopic strip in any prints they make to track them. After all, if the FBI wants a fucking backdoor in my encryption because they can't actually do their jobs the normal way, I can see why they would create a captive satanic market of printers that don't work.
Anywho this is meant to be a positive series, but it starts with a pretty awful situation. You can't get a decent printer in this country. So, here's the thing. There is no government monopoly on printers even if the government is making it hard to make them. So why not have a B corp that had a motivation besides profit to make them? Hell, why not set up a not for profit to make profits to benefit humanity at cost. I mean seriously, it might even take several million dollars but if a bunch of private citizens came together to build Printers That Work like the Bailey Building and Loan, then you might actually you know, have printers that work.
Google, back when it wasn't run by Shit Sundar Puchai, made Google Fiber to force the damn cable companies and phone companies to modernize their infrastructure. They only put it in a few parts of the country, but it scared the slothful wasteful companies to actually clean up their act. If someone set up a go fund me model with a slightly more expensive printer but one that sold at cost ink cartidges people would still go to that model in spades; because when you buy HP or any other American Printer you buy Shit in a Box.
In the United States, Late Stage Capitalism, has broken so many things, that there are tons of opportunities like this. You can't build a new Google overnight but all the enshittified companies have primed themselves to be replaced by a B-corp or Not for Profit competitor because capitalism does not work, especially when you run out of other people's money to pay for it.
