Advertising.
discounts. its all pre-calculated in the price
Recycling being the responsibility of the consumer
Passive income. If value is being created and you’re being presented some of it without doing any work it necessarily means that someone else isn’t receiving the full value of the work they’re doing.
subset of capitalism
Absolutely
In most cases I agree with you, but what about a musician who makes passive income off of people streaming their music, or people who buy my fonts?
Cap it at the original 28 years after creation. The current 70 years after the creator’s death is ridiculous.
Why should you be paid in perpetuity for work you did once? I’d love it if someone paid me residules for the work I did today making widgets.
Not passive income, they did the work of creating the music or the font
Or you’re squeezing all the value and more out of the asset and users, while increasing externalities
Sounds cool til you realize the assets being squeezed are mostly just other people
No no no. I gave them CULTURE! A wonderful work culture.
And security! Sure, not the security I decided I need for myself, and it’s only really present as long as they’re profitable to me, but security nonetheless.
After all, I had the idea and stuck my neck out to secure the financing, which is far more important than the actual daily labor that keeps things running.
We’re like a family, see.
Even if the assets aren’t people, not squeezing value is required to maintain some fun and life as well as long term sustainability. If you squeeze it, you might squeeze it dry. I hate all the adverts everywhere. Can I just go somewhere to save my eyes…
Windows
cold calling.
also robo-calls.
Ending a price in .99 so you think it is a whole dollar less.
I honestly don’t understand that, I have always rounded up for money going out and down for money coming in. So if I see something priced at $3.25 my brain thinks $4, and if I earn $3.25 my brain thinks $3 dollars.
Ah but then you’ll also see something priced at 3.99 as 4, same as something priced at 3.25
But it works! Supposedly. Don’t poke holes in the JC penney story.
That’s because it’s so normalized we don’t even realize it’s a scam anymore.
Ive always thought it was due tax related reasons. In México, most shops have it set up so the price + IVA (our consumer tax) gives you a rounded number.
college textbooks. have to have the latest edition for class, but almost nothing is different from the two-years-old one.
I once had a professor who gave assignments with the last several editions page numbers because he thought it was bullshit too.
in roughly half of my classes; my professors were the authors of the of the books that they were selling so they made photocopies of them to distribute to the student for free.
it was one of two benefits to attending the largest university in the country (at the time).
I walked my students through where to find the pdf of the text book in the first class after we covered the syllabus.
For my classes, anything that was graded was not done from the textbook it was either online questions or from a worksheet. Any work given from the textbook was just for our practice and not graded. They’d usually just call out sections of questions based on that day’s lesson.
This is why I try, if possible, to find them online for free. That’s been my first step whenever needed. Last time I needed a book and lab access code, it cost a little over $150USD!
Paying for education that “the market” wants us to have so they can have a larger pool of skilled workers, leading to lower salaries
The stock market. It’s not investment, it’s gambling. It’s also rigged by the power brokers and insider traders.
Societal expectations to move out of your parents’ house when you turn 18. It’s a scam to get you to become more profitable to corporate America. You’re an adult now. You need to buy a car you can’t afford, get a mortgage you don’t want, insure it all to protect the bank, all to go to a job you don’t want, but now need so that you can afford these “nice things.”
But if you stay with your parents, even if you actually enjoy it, you’re a failure.
Insurance.
Insurance- paying for something you might never need but required to be available JUST IN CASE. eyeroll
Then you’re denied it regardless.
correction, you do an ungodly amount of paperwork prior to getting denied.
I learned today, that if insurance companies come to the conclusion that your death was a suicide, then they don’t even have to pay out your life insurance to your family. Pretty messed up.
And if you die you lose everything you paid for and your family gets none. Sounds great!
The Dutch East India Company is still alive and well.
The stock market
This is what I came here to say! It generates zero wealth, and only serves to move wealth from one person to another.
Only if you don’t have insider info.
Car finance. It’s so prevalent, I think I’m literally the only one on our road that doesn’t drive a 1 year old, brand new, financed car. Literally everyone is like “but it’s only $499/month and I can just hand it back when I want a new one”. Well shit, yes, but try tallying up what you’ve paid for running all these new cars every three years.
Save up instead and continue saving after you bought the car. Then you can afford a different car later.
Working harder instead of prioritizing.
