You probably experienced or heard the saying "things are made cheaply these days" or "the older version was much better". Many consumer reports have noticed the quality of products declining or products working against us. this is happening more and more in practically everything we use or buy. Think about your light bulbs, home appliances, clothing, smartphones and PC's. They either don't last as long as expected or lack desired features or have undesired features.

I'm not going to focus the economic or political causes for this but rather how Open Source is the solution. Let us assume for these purposes that fair competition can't fix this.

History of the opensource market:

Microsoft became hugely wealthy and gained a monopoly of pc marketshare. This is the conditions that allow them to start intentionally making products that work against the consumer. The Foss founders had their idealistic goals but on a purely consumer level it forced MS to step up their game. Even if 95% never switch away from windows no matter how bad things get, the threat of loosing marketshare is what forces MS to improve. The 3% linuxPC marketshare is not enough to protect the masses from the evils of using big tech. However it is enough to teach them to give better value to their customer. Where commercial market competition fails open source saves us.

Eventually MS recognized the value of opensource and began directly contributing to Linux. Most commercial applications rely on under supported open sources components. I dont have the stats, but i think nowadays a majority of people use some sort of free opensource software such as libreoffice or thunderbird.

examples where there is unrealized potential for OS to fix broken markets

Appliances: many of the home appliances we use are 100 year old tech. many have onboard computers running something similar to freeRTos

Cars: as cars become more digitalized they can forcibly monetize basic features. Imagine tesla wanting to charge $100/month to use there nav/infotainment system possible start with openauto

guns: not only is OpenSource a tool to fight the evils of big tech also big government im not linking to 3d printed gun designs

homes: Boring soulless architecture that seem to less and less value to the habitants could be solved by opensource 3d printed houses

How it works: A new company alone can't hope to compete with big tech or big cooperation. But through collaboration