The writer below complains about various novel fees and surcharges that he’s seen being charged by everyone from real-estate agents to restaurants. (He plays on the analogy with “fracking,” the process of pumping water along with certain chemical agents into the ground to “loosen up” the oil etc that drilling companies are after, to “squeeze” a bit more out of the earth.) Notice that the word “competition” doesn’t appear a single time in the article. If a restaurant wants to charge you a fee you don’t like (e.g., a fee for bringing your own cake), can’t you just go to a competing restaurant? >>>
LINK: Fracketeering: how capitalism is power-hosing the last drops of value out of us all (by Ian Martin in The Guardian)
Welcome to capitalism’s late late show. If you can power-hose the last drop of value out of something, you now have an amoral imperative to do it. Fracking is the chief inspiration for today’s entrepreneurs, those “heroic wealth creators” so admired by Andy Pandery Burnham and half the Labour party. Everything is up for grabs now. The age of the racketeer is over. It’s all about fracketeering now…..
What do you think?
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