Screwing the Elderly

My Dad is 95 and sharp. He remembers the histories of patients he cared for 30 years ago, he’s au courant on every Trump scandal, but he has less than zero interest in technology and personal finance. So when I come home I try to help out. My conclusion after a really frustration session of dealing with his issues is: I have no idea how an older person without family support gets shit figured out in the year of our Lord 2025. And I certainly don’t know how they avoid getting ripped off by most of their service providers.

Let’s start with cable TV, one of the biggest screw jobs perpetrated on the US consumer in the last 50 or so years. Dad pays the regional cable company $125 for the privilege of watching local news, MS Now, CNN and a couple of other channels. However, that’s not enough for those fuckers. The marketing department decided that there are some people who have the temerity, the utter gall, to not subscribe to their Internet package as well as Cable TV. And, in the words of Chairman Mao, “The nail that sticks out is pounded down.” In this metaphor, Dad is the nail, and by extension, so am I.

Of course, the cable company lacks the directness of Mao. Instead, they sent a notification saying that his hardware is outmoded and will need to be replaced by April. When I called to see how they were going to deliver this hardware, the nice lady told me I needed to call back on a weekday to talk to the sales team. I finally nicely wrangled the reason out of her — the need to switch to a package that includes the Internet. They’re no longer willing to let my Dad mooch basic cable from them for the paltry sum of $1500/year. I politely informed her that her marketing department might want to do a little research on my home town, which has a telephone co-op which provides fiber internet plus landline to everyone at a great rate, plus, as a co-op, they refund their profit to the co-op members. These old folks pay like $960/year for their phone plus Internet, and Dad got $1,400 back last year. Yes, that’s right: he made a profit on having Internet and phone, because co-ops are non-profit, plus they get a bunch of subsidies from the USDA to provide service to rural communities.

So, I’m looking for a streaming service that will provide a remote control and a user experience that’s almost exactly like basic cable, so he won’t get confused.

There’s a political insight in this story, which is that the American consumer is so used to being fucked over that they can’t imagine another way of being. I realize the world is on fire, but one of the things that was interesting was hearing that the Minneapolis-area renters unions are getting a shot in the arm from the solidarity needed to oppose ICE. (I lost the link for this one, but I saw it on Bluesky.)

A bunch of rich assholes have banded together to support the guy sending out the gestapo to fuck with people because they live in cities and states that didn’t support him. These rich assholes run companies that make obscene profits on the backs of workers and customers, and they’re A-OK with goons abusing innocents. At the moment, voters don’t really have a way to vote against these rich fucks. Look at the freak out that accompanied Mamdani’s relatively modest promises that people might get some free services and that landlords wouldn’t be able to keep raising rent. The notion that someone picked by Jeffries or Schumer to run for a seat would say that perhaps Internet access should be provided by a public utility, or that credit card interest should be capped at some reasonable rate, is unimaginable.

“Affordability” ultimately means lower corporate profits. I don’t know if the Democratic establishment who say that Trump is trying to distract us from affordability really intend to do anything to make things more affordable, because their donors certainly think that corporate profits should do nothing but grow.