money used to be gold, now it's ones and zeros

I've been mulling over a conversation I had with my dad when I was at his place recently. I was ranting about our Honourable Wife-Beating Drunk-Driving Mayor (as I so often do) and how the hell could anybody actually be convinced to vote for the incompetent fuck. I am pretty strongly of the opinion that anybody who campaigns on the promise that they can lower taxes while simultaneously pretending that they won't then have to reduce the stuff that taxes pay for should instantly be disqualified from any position in public office. Because they are either too bad at math to be able to perform adequately at their job or they are just flat-out lying.

So my dad has this theory that part of the problem is that advertisers have been busy telling us for the last four-five decades that we can get stuff for free. "First month is free." "Free trial." "Buy two get one free." Of course everybody knows that none of this stuff is actually free. The cost is just getting shuffled onto something else. But the message has been drilled just a little further into our heads every time we've been exposed to radio or television. And now politicians have figured out that if they promise us stuff for “free” or for less money (taxes) then people will vote for them. Even though we should know that it's impossible. Even though it didn’t work any of the other times we voted for people who made us the same impossible promise.

Advertisers spend an awful lot of time and money figuring out how to get us to do stuff that we wouldn't otherwise do. I'm still thinking about this.