That's all this is: Keep the donor money flowing. Anyone suggests going after the rich, the coffers go empty.

And if the party tries to do the most obvious thing a left leaning party should do -- raise taxes and enact regulation/social welfare -- the donor money dries up and the rest of the party starts going, "Welp, we gotta tighten our belts. Who're we firing?" And the consultants are right there.

it's not as simple as "hardware has gotten better, software has gotten worse" because a lot of companies making physical devices are lost in the wilderness from a design perspective, but a rule of thumb that anything that charges you monthly gets worse over time works pretty well