Loren Brichter, back in 2020:

Short story: Google Chrome installs an updater called Keystone on your computer, which is bizarrely correlated to massive unexplained CPU usage in WindowServer (a system process)1, and made my whole computer slow even when Chrome wasn’t running. Deleting Chrome and Keystone made my computer way, way faster, all the time.

Long story: I noticed my brand new 16” MacBook Pro started acting sluggishly doing even trivial things like scrolling. Activity Monitor showed nothing from Google using the CPU, but WindowServer was taking ~80%, which is abnormally high (it should use < 10% normally).

Doing all the normal things (quitting apps, logging out other users, restarting, zapping PRAM/SMC, etc) did nothing, then I remembered I had installed Chrome a while back to test a website.

I deleted Chrome, and noticed Keystone while deleting some of Chrome’s other preferences and caches. I deleted everything from Google I could find, restarted the computer, and it was like night-and-day. Everything was instantly and noticeably faster, and WindowServer CPU was well under 10% again.

Not all Mac users, but many, found that just having Chrome installed slowed down their Macs dramatically. Completely uninstalling Chrome — and its pernicious background agents — solved the problem. This years-old “Chrome Is Bad” saga came to mind when I wrote about Google’s Gemini Mac app’s background agents.

It seems as though Google eventually fixed these Chrome bugs — or Apple changed something in a MacOS update that fixed the bugs for them — but I’ve never seen a full explanation of the problem and eventual solution. Does anyone know what happened here?

The main point is it never should have happened in the first place. A third-party app should just be a third-party app — not add components to your system software just so it can update itself when it isn’t running. Background agents and extensions are sometimes necessary to the functionality of a product. Checking for software updates to a browser or AI chatbot, when those apps aren’t running, is not necessary. The golden rule applies: imagine if every app on your system installed its own background agent to check for software updates. Chrome is a popular browser on the Mac, but it’s just a web browser. Other web browsers do just fine checking for updates from the browser itself when they’re running. If the user is actually using an app regularly, it’ll get plenty of chances to check for updates when it’s running. If the user isn’t regularly using an app, why in the world should that seldom-used app have software running all the time in the background?

This sort of chaos is why Apple keeps iOS locked down. There are no third-party login items on iOS that run in the background — let alone ones with no option to disable. No third-party app can do anything that causes the iOS window manager to consume 80 percent of the CPU while ostensibly idle. There are obviously trade-offs here. I rely on a Mac for my workstation because the Mac gives me the power to potentially shoot myself in the foot. But one major reason why iOS is an order of magnitude more popular than MacOS is because you cannot shoot yourself in the foot with it, even though that means you can’t use it to do things that would require that power.

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One of the most common criticisms of capitalism is that it depends on the goodwill of employers.

The argument goes something like this:

"What stops employers from being greedy, selfish, discriminatory, exploitative, or unfair?"

Ironically, the answer is greed itself.

Capitalism does not require employers to be good people. It does not require them to be generous, compassionate, enlightened, or even fair.

It only requires them to face the consequences of their decisions.

An employer is free to reward workers based on race, gender, friendship, family ties, office politics, favoritism, or personal bias. Nobody is stopping them.

But there is a cost.

Every time a business promotes an incompetent employee over a competent one, productivity suffers.

Every time it rewards loyalty over performance, output suffers.

Every time it prioritizes favoritism over value creation, competitors gain an advantage.

The market doesn't magically eliminate bad judgment.

It simply makes bad judgment expensive.

The Incentive Nobody Talks About

Critics often portray profit as the enemy of workers.

In reality, profit is what pushes employers toward rewarding productivity.

A business owner who wants to maximize profit has a powerful incentive to identify, retain, and reward the people creating the most value.

The best employees are not merely a cost.

They are an asset.

Losing productive workers to competitors hurts profits.

Keeping productive workers improves profits.

This creates a powerful incentive structure that exists whether the employer is morally admirable or morally questionable.

A greedy employer and a virtuous employer arrive at the same conclusion:

"I should keep my most productive workers."

The motives may differ.

The outcome is often the same.

What Happens When Employers Ignore Value?

Nothing prevents an employer from acting irrationally.

A company can absolutely promote the owner's nephew.

It can hire friends instead of talent.

It can prioritize political connections over competence.

It can reward flattery instead of achievement.

The question isn't whether this can happen.

The question is who pays the price.

Under capitalism, the answer is simple:

The employer does.

The business does.

The shareholders do.

The competitors benefit.

The market doesn't prevent mistakes.

It assigns the cost of those mistakes to the people making them.

That distinction matters.

The Difference Between Market Discipline and Political Power

When a business owner makes a bad decision, the damage is generally limited to the business itself.

When politicians make bad decisions, they can force everyone else to bear the cost.

That is one reason market mistakes and political mistakes are fundamentally different.

In a market, bad judgment loses money.

In politics, bad judgment often receives a larger budget.

A company that repeatedly ignores competence eventually loses customers, profits, talent, or all three.

A government agency that ignores competence often receives additional funding and authority.

The incentive structures are completely different.

Why Capitalism Doesn't Need Saints

Many critics assume capitalism can only work if employers are virtuous.

History suggests the opposite.

Capitalism works precisely because it does not depend on virtue.

It channels self interest toward productive activity.

A business owner seeking profit must persuade customers to buy, workers to stay, investors to invest, and suppliers to cooperate.

The owner succeeds not by taking value, but by creating enough value that others voluntarily choose to deal with him.

The system is not perfect.

Human beings are not perfect.

But capitalism contains a powerful corrective mechanism:

The people who make irrational decisions are generally the ones who bear the consequences.

That is why the real question isn't whether employers can be selfish.

They can.

The real question is whether their selfishness is aligned with rewarding value creation or insulated from its consequences.

Under capitalism, selfish employers are pushed toward productivity.

The moment they stop rewarding productivity, they begin paying for it out of their own pocket.