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Comment by uberman | Hacker News Reader

I'm not going to sugar coat it.

From my perspective lots of stuff looks grim and increasingly people seem just resigned to it.

Microtransactions required to activate heated seats in your car. The threat that companies will sell your period tracking information. Health providers "sharing" data with Google. Amazon products mapping and doing image recognition on the items in your home or providing video police without a warrant...

Yet we don't really seem to care at all. All the while, this data is repackaged and sold to advertisers who use it to amplify fringe messages designed to foster outrage, fear, and hate at each other rather than at them.

When I was younger, people used to fear that your phone was listening to you or that your tv might allow someone to watch you in your home... now, those things are product features.

Really only my kids give me any hope for the future.

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> Microtransactions required to activate heated seats in your car.

I'm sorry, but the fact that this is the first thing you list under "grim" is just comical to me. This isn't even a 1st world problem, this is a 0.1-world problem.

The thing about the future is that it hasn’t happened yet, so we need to predict based on history. 1) Things that start in high-end luxury items eventually trickle down to the base models. 2) Always on mobile connectivity is getting cheaper and better. 3) It’s obvious to everyone that every companies goal is now to get all users on the hook for a recurring subscription.

It really doesn’t take a genius to see how all those things will come together on the near future. A subscription to heated seats is merely an example of where things are clearly headed.

Why is that horrible?

The logical endpoint is that my car just charges me per use for what I use. No money down, no repair cost, no buying a new one. Just like flying: I buy a ticket, I’m done. I’m not maintaining a 737.

Some might prefer that, and at any rate it’s not an example of OMG the world is going straight to hell.

In a world where you don't own things but can only rent them (and potentially where there is limited competition due to natural consolidation), you may be taken advantage of via high margins that result from an imbalance of power or information between you and the companies you rent from. What starts off as a great deal may quickly become untenable if they raise prices.

Laissez-faire capitalists will tell you that the solution to this is perfect competition. I'll observe, though, that perfect competition doesn't seem to have thrived in many industries. I'd guess that one cause is that no one (particularly investors) wants a business with razor-thin margins.

If you don't believe that consolidation will lead to fewer options and an imbalance of power in more industries, look at the history of today's monopolies. Look also at the advice that investors like Peter Thiel give to startups in books like Zero to One.

Why should your car charge you in the first place? The fact that your "possessions" can drain your bank account already seems pretty dystopian to me.

It's ok if you don't want to own a car, and just want to drive it. Just stop calling it "your car" then.

I think COL and housing costs show why rental markets are not good in the long run. The world will increasingly belong to a handful of speculators who can rule the poor into indentured servitude by owning necessities of life.

It's not that specific thing, it's that thing being a signal for what's to come. And it's not even the only signal.

To expand on this, it's the capitalization of every aspect of human existence. I simply want less capitalization in my life. There is essentially no way out - either I can submit to subscriptions or I can pay a premium to opt out. There are no alternatives. I don't want to go live in the woods. I just want to live without the constant barrage of the micro-threats disguised as micro-transactions. It has become all consuming.

I thought we would have some control over how the world turned out, but no, if there is an opportunity to extract money, I'll be forever at the losing end of that equation. I want to opt out in a system that provides no means to do so.

I wish there was a way to identify and protest the product managers in charge of making these decisions. Hell, I'd pay to subscribe to that service.

And I'm sorry you missed the forrest for the trees.

Paying a subscription charge for heated seats is just the tip of the iceberg example from today's headlines.

It is an exemplar of the rot in our society that increasingly demonstrates the items you purchase you don't own nor can you repair them and that no meaningful privacy exists.

Perhaps this less "first world" example that follows from the same rot will appease you.

Once upon a time, farmers owned the equipment and seeds they purchased and harvested. Now, they own nothing.

Try reselling or harvesting and re-planing seeds from your crop this year and Monsanto will see you in court even if those crops grew from seeds carried onto your property by the wind. Those seeds and all future generations belong to them not the farmer.

I understand the frustration with this system, which I would hate to deal with as a customer. But when I read about it, I learned that you can decide to purchase the heating outright for a bit under $500, which I think is not an uncommon price for heated seats in many luxury vehicles (this was BMW). If a salesman framed it as "you can buy it outright if you want, or you can just buy it during the winter and save money", then I wouldn't feel so bad.

But if they deactivate the prepaid extras when you sell the car, that would be pure evil.

The fact that 'they' can deactivate anything in an item you own is dystopian in its own right. In general, items need to be usable even after their manufacturer goes out of business and stops supporting them, which seems to be less and less often the case.

People used to laugh at Stallman, but increasingly it seems like he was actually a prophet of what's to come.

Remember the audience.

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