These days I find that it's hard to keep perspective on what's really important in the life of the average consumer. On one hand, we have a lot more stuff than I ever thought we would at this point in history, and a lot of it is pretty useful... and pretty cool! The Internet delivers communication and entertainment services, cell phones are amazing, Amazon delivers products for incredibly cheap prices and helpfully recommends knockoffs that are even cheaper. As consumers, we have access to more stuff of higher quality than we ever would have in the pre-Internet era. At the same time, we're losing some important things, including community, opportunity and privacy. The opportunity to go into business for yourself in your own local community may be closing, as large businesses gradually solve the problem of how to most efficiently extract money from communities on a global scale, leveraging economies of scale and subsidies from large investors. As we keep trading away more of our freedom, it's starting to become more apparent that this is a dubious bargain. You have to wonder what's going to be left when the next generation comes along, and whether they will even understand what they've missed.
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