Hey, all, this is Future Brent, from 2017. Some dude in Nairobi just invented backblogging and I’m trying it out to see if it really works. Blogging has needed a good kick in the pants to make it interesting again. Google (motto: “Don’t want to be evil, but we’re a public company”) will probably claim to invent backblogging a few years from now, and so maybe you’ve already heard all about it, but for now I want to be the first on the block to give backblogging a try.
This has been a significant day here in 2017. I’ve blogged a lot over the past ten years (as you will know) about the death of the rights of capitalism (now accepted commonly in 2017 as Brent’s Theory of the Death of the Rights of Capitalism, for which I was happy to receive the Nobel prize in Economics). Over the years I’ve often cried foul as direct financial exchange has been replaced by advertising-supported this or that, which by early 2017 had grown to take over almost every single aspect of our lives to the point that the only two products anyone actually paid money for were cans of Coke or Pepsi.
For example, a typical person’s sapcar (Solar Assisted Pedal Car) carries advertising throughout the seats, dashboard, windshield, starter, cup-holder, etc., for every product imaginable, which is ultimately ad-supported by either Coke or Pepsi. For example, while I’m driving down the road listening to my radio(1), I may notice that my rearview mirror is mostly an ad for Coppertone sunscreen (the mirror itself is hard to find). If I go to the store for that Coppertone sunscreen it is free to purchase because the entire Coppertone label is an ad for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and so B&J reimburse the grocer directly for my sunscreen. B&J ice cream is fully ad-supported, through carton art and writing directly on the cherries and chips, by Six Flags theme parks whose entrance fees and rides are ad-supported by NBC, which is supported either by Pepsi commercials directly or by products that are (one way or another down the chain) supported by Pepsi ads. In the end, by early 2017 the only products that one can every actually pay cash money for are either Coke or Pepsi.
Until today, that is. In a remarkable event (but not unexpected by those who’ve read my blogs over the last ten years), Pepsi and Coke today announced that they would be cross-ad-supporting each other’s products. Coke will now be free, supported by the Pepsi ads that will now cover Coke cans, and vice versa.
So, as of today, there is no longer any legal product that can be purchased; cash is now defunct and will not longer be printed(2). There is no longer a reason to carry a wallet, except to carry pictures of the kids—but no one likes looking at pictures much anymore ever since every developing house started covering their free pictures with watermark ads behind which it is difficult to see the kid’s images.
Footnotes:
(1) You in 2007 may not recognize the radio of today. There are no more commercials in pop music radio, so our pure enjoyment of song never needs to be interrupted by crass commercialism. The recording industry never did figure out how to get people to pay for music, once the internet made copying so easy. Nowadays, every song is free and is itself a commercial for a product, usually Coke or Pepsi. Example: “Jenny, ooh ooh, let’s hump hump, aiiigh, hump our slump pumps, ooh ooh, work up a sweat, ooh ooh, so hot right now that I’ll need a refreshing Coca Cola, ooh baby baby”
(2) Due to lobbying by both the criminal and law-enforcement interests (both represented by the same lobbying agencies) cash will continue to be printed but only in 100 Dollar and 500 Euro denominations. Crime and crime-fighting interests argued, successfully, that they could not operate without cash, and that without their favored denominations the crime and crime-fighting industries would collapse and burden the already-weak economy with a huge influx of newly-unemployed workers.
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