Convenience Conspiracy

Convenience, we love it! Every person is supplied with lots of ways to make their live easier - or are they?
Every time there has been a hugh increase in "disposable" income there has been a corresponding surge in new conveniences that quickly is deployed that forces people to use that money to PAY for that convenience - by law.

 

Right after the Second World War (WW II, Great Patriotic War, WW I repeat) economy in the western nations picked up and people started having lots more money to spend on what THEY wanted.

This is of course goes directly against what business and governments like - they want that any extra money to go to THEM so they can spend it on what THEY want.

 

Take vehicles (cars) as a good example. Cars are fundamentally very simple. An engine takes fuel, burns it so that it turns a vertical force into a rotating torque force that is converted to turn wheels that allow people to go forward / backward by using a clutch.

 

Most anyone could drive it, repair it, understand it by just looking at it. This base mechanical familiarity helped the US win WW II due to the high amount of people who grew up around vehicles on farms who went into the military and worked / used those machines.

After the war they started putting new features on cars - and making it complicated which costs more money that these people just now happened to have.

 

Every increase in complexity takes away the ability of people to FIX that item.

 

Cars started going faster so they started mandating new safety items to protect the people - which just happen to cost a lot more money. They took away manual chokes and that in turn eliminated a lot of people from working on the carbs due to the need to understand how that works. They started adding in the sensors to regulate emissions and that meant you now needed special bypass hoses in order to even take off some of the air filters and get the car to even run. Added in new electronic ignition so that now you cannot even tune your own car unless you have a hundred thousand dollar piece of gear to plug your car into. They made changing oil complicated by putting the filter into an almost inaccessible location requiring a lift so a person can reach to it. Each and every one of those items are touted as a convenience - at each rise in consumer disposable income.

 

Look around - see what other patterns you can see where you are now forced to pay others to do work that was commonly done by yourself 50 years ago? Look at maintenance of your house, pouring concrete, garbage disposal, insurance, most everything of modern life you are now forced to pay someone else either to do it or must have it BY LAW - and every law passed is of course for "your own protection."

 

But isn't it amazing that each one happens after the working people happen to be getting ahead?