The Price Of Convenience

A bookseller in 1600s Britain had a simple problem, he wanted to print but couldn't afford to be wrong. So he walked around asking people to promise they would buy before he printed a single page asking people to sign. He printed, everyone got their book, nobody thought much of it at the time.

The milkman took that same idea and made it a never ending same door every morning, the same small amount collected every week. So small that nobody ever added it up to see what a whole year actually cost. It just became part of life, something you did not think about and that not thinking about it was the whole point.

Then in the 1970s cable companies needed to dig up entire streets and lay wire under cities before a single customer could watch a single channel. That cost millions, banks needed assurance the money would return, so they borrowed the bookseller’s promise and the milkman rhythm together to commit customers to pay small every month and it worked. Cities got wired and slowly people around the world just got comfortable with the idea of paying every month for something they used to either own or do without.

By the time Netflix arrived that comfort was already there. Netflix just removed the physical part and kept the monthly payment. Then Spotify did the same for music, instead of buying a cassette or a CD you just paid a small amount every month and got every song ever made. Adobe which used to sell software you owned forever switched to charging monthly. Microsoft did the same with Office. Newspapers moved behind paywalls. Even video games shifted  instead of buying one game for a big price, xbox and playstation started offering monthly plans giving access to hundreds of games at once.

Then came the part that made it all invisible ie. online payments, saved cards, auto debit, BNPL (buy now pay later) you entered your card details once years ago and since then the money has been leaving your account every month without you doing anything at all. No envelope, no cash, no moment of actually handing something over. In the old days the milkman stood at your door and you physically gave him money. You felt it leave your hand but today a subscription renews at midnight while you are sleeping and you find out only if you happen to check your bank statement which most people don't. Technology made life easier but it also made spending completely painless and when spending becomes painless people stop noticing it altogether.

That is the real problem, not that subscriptions exist, but that they are designed to be forgotten. Each one feels small, a few hundred rupees for music, a few hundred for movies, a little more for storage, a little more for an app. None of it feels like a decision because none of it requires one after the first time, and this is quietly destroying a habit that used to protect people, the habit of knowing where your money is going.