> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But if they deactivate the prepaid extras when you sell the car, that would be pure evil.
People used to laugh at Stallman, but increasingly it seems like he was actually a prophet of what's to come.