by Carmen
All I wanna do is have some fun, I got a feeling I'm not the only one...
Having fun for free is a very good deal.
Think, for a moment, about all the fun money can buy.
For example, for $2 a pop, you can buy a pile of Scratch'n'Win lotto cards -- for loads of instant gratification. You can drop $90 for really good seats at a Canucks game, or a ticket to Cirque de Soleil -- plus parking! You can throw down $25 for a case of beer, or hundreds of bucks for a really fine pair of shoes. For $50, you and your kid can spend all day at Playland eating tiny donuts and trying to win a stuffed dog. IT'S TRUE -- for a bunch of money, you can indeed buy yourself a shitload of fun.
But check this out. At this very moment, you are in fact reading this little essay, and presumably, having fun doing so -- for free. You could choose to have a whole lot more fun for free. Other people would see you having fun for free, and wanna have some too. Before we know it, the entire world could shift to a global fun-based economy.
Think about this. If you have fun for free, you can work HALF TIME, and spend the rest of your time having fun. Because, if you no longer need to spend half your income on fun, you can maintain your current standard of living -- and in fact, have TWICE as much fun (since you now have twice as much free time) -- for HALF of what you spent when you were working full time. Sound economics, isn't it?
There is another useful side benefit to this strategy. Since you will no longer need to consume so much stuff in order to have fun -- gasoline, Nikes, styrofoam jiffy-mugs, McFlurries -- less of the world's stuff will be required to produce and dispose of that stuff. Furthermore, the people who used to be wholly dependent on producing all that fun stuff now only have to produce and sell HALF as much stuff in order to maintain a healthy standard of living -- thereby leaving them half of their working hours, free -- to have fun!
Result being: FUN FOR FREE SAVES THE PLANET! High five.
All of these tricks will prove very useful in a short number of years, when the entire global monetary system collapses.
Conclusion being: don't wait until you're racing shopping carts full of rubles through the streets. Make a sound investment in mutual fun. Start now.
Posted by sandwichman at October 1, 2004 12:05 PM1. You are _way_ overestimating the fun-ness of that article.
2. You are ignoring the fixed costs of the computer and an inventory location for the computer, the cost of access to electricity and phone (or satellite) communication for the internet, and any regular ISP charges.
--signed,
No Fun At All
:op
Posted by: Josh Narins at October 15, 2004 09:26 AMAw c'mon, don't take it so literally...it's a METAPHOR my friend...try substituting FUN for FOOD, or SHELTER. And if it helps, substitute "cheap" for "free".
The Internet isn't free, exactly, but I'm not suggesting that we should seccede completely and immediately from the capitalist system. Anyone can go to the library and use a computer, and that's as close to free universal communications as we can get at present.
Posted by: Carmen at October 19, 2004 10:57 AM