I am just sitting here, having dealt with multiple ridiculous situations this week all centered around one thing… Greed.  In one form or another it came from someone’s desire to increase efficiency of something.  And when you call that service that didn’t *actually* set up your auto pay, like they told you they were, to try to figure out how much you owe them and their automated robot tells you there’s a 1.5hr wait…. You’re feeling it too.  Money runs the world. As they say…

And when you order that expensive tool that arrives missing a piece or, possibly worse because of how close you are to completion, is just slightly off tolerance and won’t go together… Know where that came from.  That was a line somewhere, full of likely underpaid and overworked people, and that $750 you spent didn’t go to them individually so much as it went to some CEO’s pocket.  They probably welded it a little wrong because they were on their third shift of the day.

One day you decide to contact someone at that billion dollar company to try to give someone a piece of your mind.. or… you know…. get the damned thing you paid a tram-load of money for in a non-broken state.. You always have to remind yourself it’s those same struggling folks that we’re thinking about above.  Some person who is barely holding it together themselves.  Someone who, if they told you about their problems… sat next to you at a campfire and told you about the hell their day was, you’d sympathize and hear them out.  The thing is, they’re a shield.

Yeah, think about it.  You call up this company super angry because you spent $750 and your stuff showed up missing pieces and defective.  You are mad.  You are sick of companies doing this kind of thing.  You can’t go to your favorite food stop without having to check your order because they’ll have forgotten your sauce or something else you paid extra for.  You submit yourself to being checked multiple times just for “the right” to GO INTO the damn store.  They watch you on cameras the whole time, then they have automated cameras at the self checkouts that watch your every move.

I’ve been hit by one before, I had scanned everything correctly it just didn’t understand a movement I did and decided to start blinking and call over the same people we’re thinking about here.  The same folks who are just struggling to wake up every day because sometimes they can’t even fathom getting up and doing yet another day.  I wasn’t angry.  I was confused.  I was honestly kind of interested in this robot that deemed my movement incorrect and “sus.” I tried to find more information about them but didn’t do a great job.  I’m not sure if the store is secretive about it or if I just did a bad job searching.  Maybe I’ll do that again.. that could be a neat video..

My point is, it’s kind of creepy feeling.  Then, on your way out now, some person stops you at the door and asks for your receipt and stares at it and your cart for a while.  I’ve never had them dig through my bags or anything but it’s still pretty invasive feeling.  I don’t often buy things I wouldn’t want someone seeing but I don’t want to have to talk to someone.  Sometimes I don’t want someone to see my purchase.  That should be ok.  But you’re checked at every step.  All because you want to shop at that store.

The thing is, most places are like this now.  It’s honestly kind of spooky to think about what we live in now. Putting it bluntly: We are the dystopian future from the scifi films.  It’s just happened so gradually we didn’t really notice.  We’re wage slaves in a dystopian future.  We are tracked at every step by ads and cookies and, in person, with our phones and the trillion connections they’re making every day.  Those cameras watching your FACE at the checkout.. You don’t think that thing is running into some dataset somewhere and keeping track of you for marketing purposes?  They don’t even need it when they can just use the fact that we’re a human network..

We are cyborgs.  We are a collective.  We are a hive mind.  We are the Borg.  I don’t even really get that reference but I’m pretty sure it effectively was another hive mind.  Think about it.  When was the last time you answered a question you weren’t sure about without just googling it?  When was the last time you called someone on the phone or spoke to someone in person?  I am not intending to get preachy, my point is we’ve basically built a new brain.  On a grand scale, each person is a neuron all connected in a web of interactions. We’re kind of becoming one.  We’re ok with occasionally having our privacy violated for convenience.  For interaction.

Anyway, so yeah you are angry and you call that company.  This person picks up probably fearing that you’re going to be an ass to them just trying to get through the day and THIS is the person the company gave you as their “shield.”  I try as hard as I can to avoid getting to that point with most of these folks because I understand this.  I’m successful most of the time but that’s beside the point.

My point is we don’t have power with these companies.  They aren’t worried about losing customers anymore.  There are enough people in this world willing to buy something or willing to do something or willing to not research a purchase that it really doesn’t matter even if you managed to take away hundreds of their customers or thousands even.

The truth is most of them would be customers again pretty quickly again anyway.  At some point this year a bunch of idiots were breaking an appliance they owned as some sort of pathetic protest to the company that made them.  You know what company also had record sales that month? :shrug:  I only call them idiots  because the approach is ridiculous.  Yeah the cartridges made the company money but you’ve surely already paid the company back tenfold and half of the companies that make the carts weren’t affiliated with them anyway.

We’re given this world and told it’s some sort of paradise.  We’re given a path to follow.  Given only barely enough to keep us alive.  Overwhelmed with debts and responsibilities.  Trapped in a complex weave of spiraling desires and commitments… anxieties and deep dark depressions… life.  To some degree at least.  It’s what we’re told is life.  It’s what we’ve heard since birth is life.  What we’ve been trained to want.  A good career, a stable home, a wife, 2.74 children, and a white picket fence.  I don’t know where I’ve heard that but it’s reality.

Yeah we’re slowly seemingly starting to realize how shitty this deal is for everyone but the rich.  But it’s going to take such a massive shift for any real meaningful change.   And the reality is right now we need to be doing everything we can to not collapse.  That could mean we are doing something about this dichotomy but more than likely will mean focusing on more pressing matters.  Especially since the only ones not really making out in the deal is us.  Why would anyone change anything?

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