One Human's Dream.

When I was a kid there were lots of houses that had a notice on the gate, or the door, or the wall by the door, or in the window nearest the door. It said:

No Hawkers or Circulars

If somebody knocked on the door trying to sell you a vacuum cleaner, you could point to the notice and say ‘Can’t you read? Go away.’ The message was generally taken. And then we got the internet and our computer screens came under constant assault from an ungodly horde of hawkers and circulars.

Most of them have a button which you can press to say ‘I’m not interested. Go away.’ But the message isn’t taken, and often you don’t get the choice. The button doesn’t close the ad, instead it throws up a little questionnaire which asks What’s wrong with this ad? and then gives you several options which pointedly exclude I don’t want any ads.

‘But you enjoy watching things like YouTube,’ you might say. ‘The ads pay for it.’

‘I know,’ I might reply, ‘but does it have to be paid for in money?’

‘Of course.’

‘Why?’

‘Because money makes the world go around.’

‘So how did the world turn before we invented money?’

‘We all lived as savages. Money drives development.’

‘But that’s only because the human animal is obsessed with status, and status is defined by wealth and material possessions. If it weren’t, we could develop things just because we wanted to.’

‘That’s just a silly dream.’

Quite. End of post.