The Evil that Is Keurig: Late Capitalism - Addendum

Thanks to our Patreon members for helping to make this episode possible and we're now available on all the major podcasting platforms. You can find more information at the links below. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Lake Capitalism, a survival guide addendum on the cure egg. Now, this may be just a personal obsession of mine, but it is such a great example, and it's one I've had for a while.

I've mentioned it in a previous podcast maybe like 3 years ago, but I did want to revisit this as a specific incarnation of everything we've talked about, but it really is the all the other side, not the financial global impact, da da da. This is what it comes down personally. This is where the logic of late capitalism, global financialization [clears throat] disrupts our lives in a fundamental and really for someone like myself, incredibly disturbing way. So Kurig was a company that came about reasonably.

The founders were trying to solve the problem of bad coffee in their breakroom at work. Now this is a very good problem to try and solve. Unfortunately, their solution was sort of first turned into a company, then purchased by private equity. Okay, you know the ark already, so we won't visit too much of that.

But what happened was they took an industry that was dominated by making, you know, pots of coffee and turned it into an industry that makes single serving coffee instantly. So, if you don't know what a kur is, it's one of those little machines. You put what's called a K cup into it. It pushes hot water through and produces what is theoretically called a cup of coffee.

Now, they now sell billions of those little cups a year. They are multi-billion dollar company. um they ended up partnering or being bought out or meshing with Dr. Pepper.

So, they're a global financial corporate giant just like all the Kaisu stuff we've been talking about. But [clears throat] why does this matter and what what what does this seem like such a perfect example to me? It's because of the destructiveness and the way it undermines everything that is of value. And I when I say everything, I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but it's probably missed something, but it hasn't missed much.

And so, just to start, we'll ...