My brain on crack
May. 22nd, 2008 07:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reymonkeyI had a dream in which I was a Peter Pan-like character, working two aid two children (brothers?) in their fight against the unfair life situation into which the adult world had put them. We had subdued and escaped their unkind guardians. We had stolen the fantastic houseboat that belonged to them as a home that would give us freedom and the ability to evade the clutches of adults until the older brother became eighteen and legally allowed freedom. We were on the verge of escaping the Feds who were trying to stop all this and put the kids back into the hands of the Guardians or a foster home or whatever. The Feds had planted some money with some kind of tracking system on it, a bait which we’d picked up, but we were counting the money we’d amassed for buying necessities and keeping ourselves happily independent of adults and could afford not to use it. We had also successfully captured and handcuffed the Fed trying to catch us, and he told us about the tracking numbers on the money we’d taken, gloating about it. I sorted through the money, calm and casual because we were going to leave him on the dock and flee safely. Some of the money was real, some was fake, and some was coupons.
I, awesome childlike being of cleverness and Peter Pan-like powers, began to give the Fed a talk as we prepared to make good our ultimate escape.
I started to lecture him, about coupons.
I mean seriously, what is the point of coupons? It’s a minority of society that actually goes to the trouble to use them, and of that group the larger fraction looks for coupons for products that they would already buy regardless. The fraction of people that buy an item they wouldn’t otherwise, just because they have a coupon for it, is minute. Granted these minute fractions of people buying an item just because they have a coupon for it, in addition to the group buying more of an item than they normally would because of a coupon, still adds up to a significant amount in profits. On the other hand, does the net profit from these otherwise nonexistent gains really add up to a number large enough to offset the cost of printing, distribution, and ultimately paying for dealing with the sheer amount of recycling and garbage the unused flyers and coupons create. Are these companies ultimately on the grand scale making a profit or a loss from the sheer creation of coupons. I think not.
Furthermore, I argued, it would be of far greater profit to the Feds to not bother to catch us at all but use the consumer information that could be gathered from our purchases with the marked money to sell to companies for targeted marketing.
This then, was the apex of my cleverness as the mastermind behind the escape of the children. I gave a handcuffed Fed a well-reasoned tirade against coupons, then I woke up. Why brain, why??!?
I, awesome childlike being of cleverness and Peter Pan-like powers, began to give the Fed a talk as we prepared to make good our ultimate escape.
I started to lecture him, about coupons.
I mean seriously, what is the point of coupons? It’s a minority of society that actually goes to the trouble to use them, and of that group the larger fraction looks for coupons for products that they would already buy regardless. The fraction of people that buy an item they wouldn’t otherwise, just because they have a coupon for it, is minute. Granted these minute fractions of people buying an item just because they have a coupon for it, in addition to the group buying more of an item than they normally would because of a coupon, still adds up to a significant amount in profits. On the other hand, does the net profit from these otherwise nonexistent gains really add up to a number large enough to offset the cost of printing, distribution, and ultimately paying for dealing with the sheer amount of recycling and garbage the unused flyers and coupons create. Are these companies ultimately on the grand scale making a profit or a loss from the sheer creation of coupons. I think not.
Furthermore, I argued, it would be of far greater profit to the Feds to not bother to catch us at all but use the consumer information that could be gathered from our purchases with the marked money to sell to companies for targeted marketing.
This then, was the apex of my cleverness as the mastermind behind the escape of the children. I gave a handcuffed Fed a well-reasoned tirade against coupons, then I woke up. Why brain, why??!?
