We live in a world where nobody wants to pay the cost of anything
Weight, wealth, wisdom…water for data centres.
In a similar tone to last week’s article, and yes it may seem quite odd again, but in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, we’re going to talk about how nobody wants to pay the cost of anything. We can see this behaviour in numerous avenues; physical health, wealth generation, learning and education, energy/fuel, through the use of artificial intelligence, and even in things like video games. So, what is at the core of this?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, GLP-1s have become all the rage, moving on from merely treating people for diabetes and now targeting weight loss, for both genuine medical reasons and vanity purposes. Essentially, it is the “lose weight fast!” marketing blitz on steroids. There’s some of the “I don’t want to diet, I don’t want to exercise, just give me a pill or injection”, but it’s not the whole picture. These medications aren’t cheap either (to the disappointment of the masses), but such is the demand to not be fat – and quickly – people will continue to enlist in order to avoid the (true) cost of the time, effort, and energy of proper healthy diet and exercise over years. This conversation is nestled within the larger conversation of peak physical health, status, desirability, beauty, attractiveness.
Probably even before our appearance, our level of wealth is of great concern to many, and now we see so many more predatory and pernicious “investments” and ways of generating income and wealth. Gambling is a massive problem yet marketing remains pervasive and people keep being tempted by financial Satan and believing they can be successful in making money fast – there can be an addiction component, but I won’t get into that here. The rise in short-term risk-heavy/speculative investments with the ever-present idea of “get rich quick”, allowing people to circumvent steady, budget-savvy, financially sound behaviour over years. Wealth disparity is a glaring issue in today’s world, and most people know which end they’d rather be on. The cost-of-living crisis is eroding into people’s wealth generation and this doesn’t help savings and investments from people who need it the most, hence, it can trigger more risk-taking behaviour by people who cannot afford the risk and are prone to be taken advantage of.
The boon in the self-help genre and podcasts in general, people are interested in learning and becoming more aware and educated on topics. However, a lot of the time, it feels like a “summaries on summaries” learning approach – we are shortcutting the shortcuts for the TLDR generation. Why take the time to properly learn anything, to have the full educational experience, when you can use hacks and cherry-pick, knowing enough to fool those who don’t know anything, but not knowing enough to actually understand the subject and do good with it (beyond self-serving). The sheer amount of self-proclaimed “experts” parading themselves on social media who do nothing more than keep fuelling shallow, emotionally charged arguments and benefiting off bum-steering people, are a product of the times. AI is now supercharging this, and so many people just blindly accept what it says.
AI is having a remarkable effect on multiple fields, and I don’t make that statement with glowing positivity. The creative fields especially are at war with AI as it learns and replicates what humans have taken centuries and numerous iterations to improve upon. My website builder keeps telling to use AI to write these posts and I will keep refusing to. Human creative skill takes years to develop and varies greatly from person to person, and to think some people believe that typing some prompts into a generative AI, is somehow the same as what a writer, drawer, painter, photographer, video-maker etc. does is absurd to me. Most artists struggle to keep above water and this certainly will place more pressure as companies and individuals outsource their creative needs to AI instead of utilising a human artist.
I think a key factor at the core of all this happens to be the tolerance (or lack of thereof) of uncertainty. People nowadays don’t want to commit to something without a guaranteed reward, and that is not how life works. As uncertainty increases across society, an increase in short-term behaviour results. The capacity to sustain attention towards a goal – beyond when it’s interesting or easy to you – wains considerably. It’s a concoction of too much effort, laziness, and a rationalised response to the probable futility of the outcome. Ideas are more likely to stay ideas than get put into action in times of uncertainty.
A few other related items, if I may.
The fuel crisis, prices artificial inflated thanks to the American-Iran war, but I still find it staggering that for the complete process, underground to bowser, it’s still objectively pretty well priced just comparatively it’s difficult to comprehend given how much it’s gone up relative to what it was.
Paying for quality is a largely accepted generalisation – my recent wine tasting experience is testament to this. Price as a proxy for value used to be a tried-and-true method, however, we’re now paying the earth for a lot of garbage products and services. This is a result of numerous factors including inflation and wage stagnation, with our purchases taking up more of our disposable income combined with a reduction in purchasing power.
What should be a business cost vs consumer cost? This has been played out in my country recently with the Government banning the card surcharge on all eftpos transactions. In response, a lot of business have increased their prices – more than the original surcharge – to cover costs, while some have chosen to absorb the cost. Are we better off now? All I know is that we live in a world where nobody wants to pay the cost of anything.
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