Across every industry, quality, service, and choice have all gone down while prices go up. Shrinkflation is no longer a one-off tactic, but instead a permanent strategy ingrained across corporate America. It’s not that you outgrew your childhood favorites - it’s that they became objectively worse. Yet decades ago in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, these same companies were creative and innovative. They dreamed big - launching new brands, products, and formats beyond to win customers on merit as much as emotion. They took pride in what they invented. Today, all that ambition has been liquidated in favor of ruthless short-term profit engineering. Cost-cutting is nothing new, but everything changed in 2011 with the release of Moneyball. The film was more than just an underdog sports story. What the Social Network was for nerds, Moneyball was for suits. The movie spread through business schools and company HQs. Ultimately, winning was presented as a math problem - not a creative one.