The Serious Price of the Hyperconvenient Economy

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/03/the-serious-price-of-the-hyperconvenient-economy/
Date Written:  2017-11-03
Publisher:  Counterpunch
Year Published:  2017
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21651

The rapid "progress" towards greater convenience will induce dependency, ignorance of the product and service and more loss of voice, self-determination and self-reliance.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt: There is the convenience of credit and debit cards. It started in the nineteen fifties when a businessman found it inconvenient in restaurants to have to make sure he had enough cash. Why not sign up restaurants to take the Diner’s Card? Before long the question became, why not take it all the way to enable massive impulse buying, massive invasion of privacy, revolving debt traps, bankruptcies, and the iron collar of unilaterally determined credit scores ratings? Why not deliberately overextend credit and turn consumers into hooked supplicants who won’t complain to their car dealers, insurance agencies or landlords for fear of a complaint lowering scores and ratings?