Ok I just stopped and thought about it, and concluded that this is BS.
I'm glad that all these businesses exist, so that I can specialize in a particular kind of work, and they can specialize in doing things I don't do, and then I can transact with them using a standard medium of exchange to trade my special skills for theirs.
None of that has anything to do with "the weaknesses of human nature" or laziness, or false urgency, or an impeded ability to distinguish value, cost, and need. It's just a trade of my time for theirs, on terms I find acceptable.
There is nothing fraudulent about any of this. The coffee shop I bought my coffee from this morning and the restaurant I bought my lunch from this afternoon did not fool me, I just enjoyed drinking the coffee and eating the food they prepared, and considered their prices fair. No semantic legalities or double speak or meaningless words required, I just wanted some goods and services, and was happy to purchase them.
You honestly feel this way about your bank, your cell provider, your health insurance company, your insurance company? When you read your bills, and see countless arbitrary fees, do you feel as if you're in a personal relationship with the service and in control?
The small shop owner or tradesmen, sure. The giant corp with no human connection and nothing but a walled presence? No way.
Yes, all of those businesses provide me useful services. Do I have my criticisms of all of them? YES. Does that mean they are scams that rely on human weaknesses to thrive? No, that would be a very naive and, frankly, silly conclusion to draw.
This isn't boolean math, there's a whole continuum between "everything is perfect" and "everything is a corrupt scam".
Good luck negotiating or even communicating with ATT or American Airlines or any major provider of services you think you buy... Let alone your hospital bill, your car insurance, your health insurance or your taxes... The list goes on and on and on. We're what they call "Captive customers". You literally have no choice.
It's actually astounding that you support this stuff let alone respect it. However, in a world where people put tattoos of Tesla on their bodies, it makes sense.
Once again, you are describing things that are very bad and annoying and which I desperately want to see improved, but you are not describing things that are scams or fraudulent.
It would certainly be a scam if I were convinced to pay AT&T or American Airlines, and then they didn't actually build any cell towers or fly any airplanes. But that's clearly not the case! Absolutely yes, complain about poor business practices and bad provision of service, that's an important back-pressure mechanism. And yeah, it is naive to be all dewy-eyed and worshipful of a business and its leaders (like I see way too many people being with Musk, and have seen with other companies and people at other points in the past).
But your view that these businesses do nothing useful is just as inaccurate as the view of those blind worshippers. What you want to do when evaluating stuff in the world, is to draw conclusions as accurately as possible. Setting out two buckets for "good" and "bad" and tossing everything you see into one of the two of them is only going to lead you to having a distorted inaccurate view of everything.
Insurance can be a scam, when you pay premiums while the provisions for payout are so thin as to never be triggered. But it's pretty hard to run an insurance scheme that never pays and just fully pockets the premiums, without being prosecuted.
And health insurance in particular is further from a scam than most, because a huge amount of money is paid out for medical care on a constant basis, and a large portion of that is paid by health insurance companies. It can certainly be a bad deal for individual healthy people, but in aggregate, it is certainly not a scam.
What "stuff" is it astounding that I support? You want me to, what, think that it's bad that phone companies provide cell service and airlines fly planes? I don't. I think it's good that they do those things. That doesn't mean that I think everything about their business practices is good. These are not conflicting thoughts, in any way.
I'm glad that all these businesses exist, so that I can specialize in a particular kind of work, and they can specialize in doing things I don't do, and then I can transact with them using a standard medium of exchange to trade my special skills for theirs.
None of that has anything to do with "the weaknesses of human nature" or laziness, or false urgency, or an impeded ability to distinguish value, cost, and need. It's just a trade of my time for theirs, on terms I find acceptable.
There is nothing fraudulent about any of this. The coffee shop I bought my coffee from this morning and the restaurant I bought my lunch from this afternoon did not fool me, I just enjoyed drinking the coffee and eating the food they prepared, and considered their prices fair. No semantic legalities or double speak or meaningless words required, I just wanted some goods and services, and was happy to purchase them.
That's honest, not thievery.