I’m not in favor of coin-op elevators. But there are precedents. The ownership class will nickel-and-dime you to death if they think they can. They view the rest of us as a resource to be strip-mined.
Not exactly a one for one comparison. What you’re describing is just a gas meter. I’ve lived in houses that had them. It’s a way of paying your gas bill on a pay-as-you-go basis instead of monthly. Annoying, but not exactly a great example of the kind of rent seeking you’re pointing at, since it’s just a method of paying for a thing that everyone would expect to pay for (under any form of capitalism, at any rate).
Coin operated meters are usually more expensive per watt than billed ones. They normally work with a card that you can charge up at the local corner shop these days.
Sure, but the point is that they’re not a good example of “rent seeking”, which is specifically where companies require things that used to be included in a fixed cost and break it out as a separate payment, at no benefit to the user.
Lots of Americans have watched the Wallace and Gromit shows and movies.
Probably, fewer of them understand that the robotic moon-dwelling antagonist in A Grand Day Out was a coin-operated heating and cooking appliance, modeled after the sort that actually existed and operated in post-War Britain.
I’m not in favor of coin-op elevators. But there are precedents. The ownership class will nickel-and-dime you to death if they think they can. They view the rest of us as a resource to be strip-mined.
Not exactly a one for one comparison. What you’re describing is just a gas meter. I’ve lived in houses that had them. It’s a way of paying your gas bill on a pay-as-you-go basis instead of monthly. Annoying, but not exactly a great example of the kind of rent seeking you’re pointing at, since it’s just a method of paying for a thing that everyone would expect to pay for (under any form of capitalism, at any rate).
Coin operated meters are usually more expensive per watt than billed ones. They normally work with a card that you can charge up at the local corner shop these days.
Sure, but the point is that they’re not a good example of “rent seeking”, which is specifically where companies require things that used to be included in a fixed cost and break it out as a separate payment, at no benefit to the user.