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Comment by beaconstudios | Hacker News Reader

It /did/ used to be provided by communities. Funerals are traditionally handled by the church, an arrangement which seemed to work for a long time and doesn't contain the dilemma of impersonal and potentially exploitative interactions that entail commercial transactions. Communities have specialisations too. Unfortunately the community seems to be dying with the secularisation of society which only leaves government and business to tackle things.

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Even when the church holds the funeral - often at no charge if its a member of the church who has died, and for a small suggested donation for others - a funeral director handles the body. And that costs thousands and thousands of dollars. My Dad's church funeral cost NZ$15,000 and the church would have seen less than NZ$1,000 of that.

That's a tremendous amount of money. I'm sure the church bringing in professional services to handle funerals is a more modern innovation too. The ideal in my head is that it would be entirely handled by the community - I presume this ideal existed in the past, though I'm not sure how far back you'd have to go per-locality. In the UK where I live, churchgoers also are typically buried by a funeral director, so I'm not talking about something that still exists AFAIK.

Also, I'm sorry for your loss.

> Funerals are traditionally handled by the church,

You're somehow assuming that a religious organization does not operate as a corporation, even down to the invoices.

Charging money does not make something a corporation. Though I'm aware of the financialised nature of some American churches, I'm talking from a British perspective where that isn't the case (as far as I am aware, I don't personally attend church).

Either way, I don't think there's as much moral hazard if you're charging someone at cost as part of a communal service, compared to trying to squeeze as much profit as possible out of grieving families.

> Charging money does not make something a corporation.

In your opinion, other than the different taxation schemes, what's the difference between a religious organization and a corporation?

Specially if both types or org charge to provide the exact same service.

if you mean some televangelist megachurch then sure, they're basically the same thing.

I was thinking of local parishes, which have historically existed as a communal centre and hub of support for a community.

I genuinely don't understand how you'd think that enlisting a professional service versus your local community to deal with a bereavement would not be different? That's like saying that the only difference between paying somebody to be your friend versus having a legitimate friend is only different because money changed hands?

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