Consumers are expected to use “buy now, pay later” payment plans heavily this holiday season, a forecast that bodes well for retailers but that has credit experts again sounding alarm bells.
Reminds me of that P K Dick story “Ubik”. Aside from the fantastical stuff that happens in the book the one thing that struck me was the implication that you had to pay for everything. Pay for your shower in your own home. Pay to turn on the TV. Pay to access your apartment. Old fashioned because you’d drop coins into a slot for the access, now you just use subscriptions.
I loved scifi for the amazing possibilities it imagined for the future. Medicine, travel, aliens, materials sciences, etc.
I was reading the wrong scifi, I should have read more of the dystopian stuff by Dick, Gibson, or any other author that shows a world consumed, failing, and decrepit thanks to corporatocracy extracting everything from the people with a useless and ineffective government controlled by corporations.
Reminds me of that P K Dick story “Ubik”. Aside from the fantastical stuff that happens in the book the one thing that struck me was the implication that you had to pay for everything. Pay for your shower in your own home. Pay to turn on the TV. Pay to access your apartment. Old fashioned because you’d drop coins into a slot for the access, now you just use subscriptions.
I loved scifi for the amazing possibilities it imagined for the future. Medicine, travel, aliens, materials sciences, etc.
I was reading the wrong scifi, I should have read more of the dystopian stuff by Dick, Gibson, or any other author that shows a world consumed, failing, and decrepit thanks to corporatocracy extracting everything from the people with a useless and ineffective government controlled by corporations.
Far, far more realistic.