The Modern World Part III: You Exist To Be Farmed

“I have nipples, Greg.  Could you milk me?” – Meet the Parents

Klaus, and his cat, Mrs. Triddlesworth.

This is the third and final (for now) commentary about modern life and what modernity has brought us.  The first one was dealing with health (The Modern World Part I: Health And Strippers), the second with life in general (The Modern World Part II: Wages, Subscriptions, and Dating).  This last one deals with the essence of the modern world:  Money.

We are being farmed.  For money.  For time.  For votes.

I started noticing the money-farming thing in the 1990s.  I looked at what Sears© was doing back then because I was at the point where I needed to start paying bills or cultivating the lifestyle of an urban outdoorsman.  To me, what Sears® was attempting seemed obvious – they were attempting to see what the average family spent each month and were trying to swallow it all.

You could even get a Sears© store credit card to pay for it all (plus a wee 20% interest fee).  Sadly, I heard that their Sears™ credit card database has just been hacked – they now have the personal data for everyone born between 1899 and 1921.  Sears™, of course, sold everything from tools to toddler beds to toasters to towels to trench coats to twine.

But that wasn’t enough.  Sears™ bought Allstate™ so they could insure your house and car.  Sears™ bought Dean Witter Investments©, Coldwell Banker Real Estate™, and developed the Discover™ card to boot.

Outside of food, you could get a majority of your needs covered if you had a family just by buying stuff from Sears© product and their companies.  You could invest, buy a home, and even (in some places) have Sears™ mechanics work on your car.

I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys’r’Us© kid . . . bankrupt and empty inside.

This strategy failed, spectacularly, because Sears™ forgot how to sell stuff – it imagined it was a finance-real estate – insurance company and forgot that the big business that brought people in the door was the stuff.  Today, there are fewer Sears™ stores left than movies Nic Cage did in the last three months, so only 36 or so.

But the concept of “farming people for monthly payments” stuck with me.  The very best companies start with an idea of how to serve people, but at some point, the goal of all of them become money extraction.  Then they (generally) fail.  I’m looking at you, General Electric®.

Sometimes, companies even get the law changed to make a product legally required.  Example?

Car insurance.  There was a time it wasn’t required.  As of 2020 (the latest data I could find), two states don’t require it, but the other 48 require it (or bonding).  Before 1956, no states required car insurance.  Is it a good idea?  Yeah.  But I think the biggest proponents were car insurance companies who were tired of covering for the 45% of accidents that were caused by women drivers, which is weird.  The steering wheel isn’t even on their side.

What’s the worst thing about parallel parking?  The witnesses.

What other regular bills do most people pay in 2022?

  • Cable TV,
  • Subscription streaming,
  • Internet,
  • Elvis impersonators,
  • Property taxes,
  • Mortgage or rent,
  • Trash,
  • PEZ®,
  • Water,
  • Water soluble dog wax,
  • Sewer,
  • Johnny Depp, and
  • Homeowners’ associations

I could keep going.  Everyone wants a check, and most of them want it monthly so they can be as regular as Biden’s strokes.  Some of the things on the list are optional, and some are compulsory.  It took The Mrs. and I quite a lot of hunting when we moved to Texas to find a house that didn’t have a homeowners’ association.  And Johnny Depp?  Who can avoid that on a Saturday night?

But the farming gets worse.  It used to be that many (not all) families in the 1950s could get by with only one income.  Then, enter feminism.  It was far from natural – but women were made to feel in some way inadequate if they didn’t burn their bras, start smoking, and go to work and type PowerPoints®.  Or whatever women did at work in the 1960s.  Help the Clampetts?  I’m at a loss.

I gave a friend a book for his birthday.  I hope he returns it on time, it’s due in two weeks.

The number of houses for families didn’t go up any faster, but the income of the families did as mothers entered the workforce.  So, as women began to make money, the same number of families were chasing the same number of houses (suburbia could only grow so fast), but with higher income.

The result?  Housing prices went up so the standard of living didn’t even increase that much.  The nuclear family, already pulled from the extended family by events I’ve talked about in earlier posts in this series, began to feel the stress.  The net gain from women entering the workforce for many families was nearly zero, if not negative.

Don’t believe me?  Check housing prices around big cities.

As the stress from two working families shot up, the divorce rate went up.  And government dependency went up.  Thus?

People farmed for their labor became dependent people farmed for votes.  How can the Left keep winning like this?  That, sadly, wasn’t the only big economic change to hit the modern world.

College became (during the 1970s) another way to farm people for money.  The Average Midwestern College® in the 1970s could be paid for with a typical part-time job with money left over for pizza, Pepsi®, and a Ford® Pinto™.  The Pinto® might have been the best argument ever for car insurance.

Before then, most people didn’t go to college, because it wasn’t required to get a good job or start a good business.  But as numbers of people attending college went up, supply and demand kicked in.

The supply of college slots increased, sure, but the colleges found that they could charge a lot more for school.  But politicians decided that everyone should be allowed to go to school, so they introduced the Guaranteed Student Loan.  This was a government program where you could borrow enough to cover the tuition at most schools.

Okay, say it out loud.

Heck, I’d like to thank student loans for getting me through grad school.  I don’t think I can ever repay you.  I kid.  But the last loan payment was due on 1/1/2013.  I made sure to not pay ahead, so if 2012 was the end of the world, at least that last payment would have been a freebie.

Colleges, of course, decided that you could pay the borrowed amount PLUS more money, so tuition went up with loan amounts.  More students plus higher tuition led to more loans.  This led to more debt.

Now the average student loan debt is over $39,000.  The total student loan debt in the country is $1,7 trillion.

Where did this $1.7 trillion go?  To climbing walls.  To cool dorm rooms.  To spring breaks.  To new buildings.  And, far too much of it went to Leftist professors teaching their students that the problem is too much tradition, and the solution is even more modernity and “free” medical care.

What kind of Medicare would Moses have?  Part C.

Yes.  Medical care.  In general, the very best medical advice I’ve seen says to stay away from doctors as much as you can.  Eat healthy food.  Get exercise.  Stay hydrated.  Wash your hands.  Try not to get crushed under heavy things.  Avoid Chicago.

The problem is that none of this is very profitable for the medical industry.  Healthy people are lousy customers.  Goldman Sachs® asked it themselves, “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?”  Yes, this is a real quote.

Well, no, curing patients doesn’t work for big financial companies – they hate that idea.  No one makes money off of diet foods if you maintain a healthy weight.  No one makes money off of insulin if you can avoid diabetes.  And they actually want you to get cancer.  This is again a comment from the same Goldman Sachs® report:  “Where an incident pool remains stable (e.g., in cancer) the potential for a cure poses less risk to the sustainability of a franchise.”

Hmmm.  Does the Pfizer™ vaccine make more sense now?  If they have their way, boosting will be an annual event.  Does that sound sustainable?  I’m sure Goldman Sachs© is thrilled.

Are psychoactive medications sustainable?

But people owning things appears to be cramping the style of the elites.   The latest idea that has been widely talked about is the Great Reset – a transition away from past economic ideas, such as “ownership” and “family” and “freedom” and “sleeping in on Saturday morning”.

We’ve been moving towards the Great Reset.  According to their thoughts:  We’ll own nothing, and like it.  Then, our time could be farmed forever.  Our desires could be controlled and programmed.  We’ll like having nothing because that’s what they designed.  And they’ll further atomize and alienate us.

Because that’s profitable.  Don’t believe me?  Listen to them, in their own words:

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

39 thoughts on “The Modern World Part III: You Exist To Be Farmed”

  1. Hi John:

    Another great post! Besides being farmed, I wonder how many jobs are designed to avoid any creative thinking by labor,so we’re not just milked, but programmed.

    I recently left a 22 year career in field service in the analytical instrument industry- HPLC and mass spectrometry- due to vax mandate.

    I felt fortunate to be hired by a client of mine as analytical scientist in a cannabis testing lab. No vax, no masks ever. Spent the first week observing and went to my manager with ideas to improve lab efficiency at least 20%, IMHO.

    Was told I was “wasting his time”. It dawned on me that people are for companies that cannot afford robots.

    Sigh 😞

    1. I believe that most jobs today are designed for an IQ of 85 or so. Creative thinking = not allowed, so people are easily replaced.

      1. 85 seems generous. I like to add extra coin to my payment at cash registers after cashier has seen my paper bill in hand.

        “$9.91? We’ll here let me give you $10.16 to get rid of some small change.”

        I swear they’d give me any amount back if said it authoritatively.

      2. I’ve had a theory for years that when hiring shipping clerks, companies give applicants a reading test. If they can read, they are not hired. At least, that’s the only explanation for the inordinate number of shipments we order that go to the wrong address, contain the wrong parts, or never come at all.

  2. Tha man that destroyed Sears™, Eddie Lampert®, “parks” his boat on the Ashley at the Charleston City Marina. It needed some diesel, so he filled it up. $53,000 worth. Guess someone came out OK from its bankruptcy.

    As for tuition, mine was $108/semester, fall 1970 in Starksville.

    1. I was in Starkpatch last weekend for the first time in 20 plus years. It’s changed a lot since I started there fall of 71. My old man (small business owner) wrote a check for tuition and room and board. Told me to make it work. That last month was touch and go. Lost weight, part time job got me thru.

      1. David-

        As well, haven’t been back to Starkvegas in 7 or 8 yrs. The only alum I’ve had contact with lately spends every February in Beaufort (SC). My much older cousin/legal guardian wanted me to go to work for his wholesale paper company after I got my Pachyderm MBA, but no way I’d live in hell, er Meridian.

  3. My oldest daughter just got fired from her new job right after she just bought a house. The reason given for her job loss was because she supposedly spoke harshly to someone and hurt their feelings. (She was hired on a probationary basis by the city.) She wasn’t even given a chance to meet her accuser.

    The real reason she was let go was because she was ambitious…the reason she was hired in the first place. She had good ideas that would make the city operate better and make life easier for the citizens. Problem was her ideas cost money and TPTB didn’t want to spend the money. So their solution was to let her go on the flimsiest of made up excuses.

    1. Women working with women can be a snakepit. The Mrs. worked in a job once where if you didn’t go along . . . well, you get the picture.

  6. Most of us have been called “wage slaves” for decades.
    We all live in Company Towns now, and the bosses keep screwing the lid down tighter each year.

  7. I’m not being farmed much as near as I can tell. I’ve somehow managed to remain mostly autonomous, mainly because I don’t WANT very many things. I’ve got most of what I need. That and my growing distaste for what passes for entertainment and most modern “conveniences” that make life distinctly less convenient (I’m looking at you, iPhone) allows me to live mostly unencumbered by financial shackles. I’m not rich by any means, but I seem to be happier living with less than many people I know.

    Except for chainsaws. Must have all the chainsaws.

    1. What this man said, especially the chainsaws. Seriously though, if you can rid yourself of the “want” (which literally every single thing your eyes see or your ears hear are designed to evoke in you) you’ll find that the “need” is pretty cheap to run.

  9. 1) Sears still exists. We call it Amazon now. Neither the Big Book nor the Christmas Wish Book have anything on Big A’s website. If the CEOs of Sears from 1970-last week hadn’t had their heads shoved way up their hindquarters for 50 years, Amazon now would be called Sears, Roebuck. (Similar story: back in the days of the late 1960s after Walt died, and floundering for direction, Disney approached ABC, and asked if they’d be interested in buying the company. ABC said they didn’t know what they’d do with a cartoon studio, so they passed up the deal. So instead, Disney did what they do best, which was metastasize and take over all human life on the planet, and in 1995, they bought ABC instead, for $19B. Which is chump change for a company that pulls in close to $70B/yr. Talk about failures of vision. I was surprised – really, really surprised – Bezos didn’t buy and hasn’t bought Sears, lock, stock, and barrel, for the exact same reason. They’d revive the company in about 5 minutes, and in 10 years, they’d put WalMart and Target out of business, with the exact same business model Sears used to become what those of us old enough to remember, remember: the worldwide purveyor of everything, at the speed of picking stuff out on a (web)page, and delivered to store or door in days. Just like Amazon does now, and just like Sears did then. Mark my words.)

    2) Actual Sears forgot the first rule of farming: take care of your livestock. Feed them, water them, give them everything they need, and let them graze, and they won’t run off.
    I worked for those idiots as one of my earliest jobs. Discover: A credit card for people who should never be extended credit.
    The Craftsman tools I bought then were made in USA, by Western Forge, of Colorado. I unloaded the boxes and stocked them on the shelves.
    The ones they sell now: made in China. Every last stinking p.o.s. one of them.
    And they can’t figure out how they killed their brand, when they did that with everything, and exported their customers’ jobs overseas, so now no one can shop there, or anywhere else. And who now have a scorching dose of butthurt thanks to Sears, and memories like an elephant.
    If I’m going to buy Chinese pot-metal junk tools, I’ll get it from Horror Freight, for $6, and know exactly what kind of shoddy single-use disposable crap I’m getting for my fiatbux.

    3) Recurring payments? Minimize. I have mainly only three: rent, a car payment (with insurance), and cell service. I’m living on <25% of my income. (Unfortunately, Uncle TaxThief is living on 45% of my income(!), the bloodsucking bastard. The other 30% left after the Sheriff of Buttrapingham is done with me is for everything else.)
    And once I buy Camp Snoopy and set it up to my specs, my only recurring bill will be taxes. If i could have done it earlier in life, I would have gone Galt decades earlier.

    1. Agreed on all points – Sears missed the boat back in 2002 – and if they had kept actual service, they could have been Amazon. Now? A skeleton.

      Go Galt! Go Camp Snoopy!!!!

  10. Good lines in there John but you didn’t mention the biggest, cruelest milker of them all: Big G. I like to think of them as aliens with really, really big probes hooked up to our bank accounts.

  11. “Communism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff.” ― Frank Zappa

  12. I just left a retail job I absolutely loved until the ‘rona mass formation took hold. Company went from selling quality stuff bundled with great service to stocking mostly chinesium crap with an extended warranty and credit card pitch required on every sale. They have been hemorrhaging talent and experience ever since; good people don’t want to be on either side of that kind of deal.

    My first tuition check in 1980 was for $147.

    1. More to come – I expect the inflation to come will result in very difficult times and more corruption . . . .

  14. I’ve long compared the American public to “cows to be milked.” We’re milked by business. We’re milked for interest on credit. We’re milked for taxes. We’re milked to remain “healthy.” In return we’re given just enough to stay alive and quiet. This is the reality of it all. We’re nothing more than an energy source for The Matrix…

    1. Yup – all with a stack of monthly bills to be paid. If only we didn’t insist they send out paper bills!

  15. John, you are not wrong. Everyone outside of the individual views the individual as commodity to be taken advantage of – good heavens, they are so desperate to “Farm” the individual that the will give you things for free; you must only surrender information about yourself to be passed along to companies who can market to you all the more.

    The sad part is the more one gets into the system, the harder it is to get out of it. We are lucky in that sense; we remember a time before such things existed. The younger generation, not so much.

    To Aesop’s point, I wish I was smarter younger as well. If we can get to the Ranch, it would immediately be property taxes and the usually accoutrement of living – but I am betting I can reduce all of those, given time there.

    1. Went on the local pub crawl this weekend in Modern Mayberry. Got free beers at several places because they’ve known me for years. Modern Mayberry still exists. And don’t call me Otis.

  16. People don’t like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think. Don’t run, don’t walk. We’re in their homes and in their heads and we haven’t the right. We’re meddlesome.
    River Tam – Serenity

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