Capitalism Milks the Dead

In America dying isn’t the end of your problems. It’s the start of someone else’s payday.

The U.S. funeral industry is a masterclass in capitalism’s ability to monetize practically everything, even grief. The average funeral with burial costs $7,000-$12,000, and that’s before you buy the plot, the headstone, or the flowers. If you want to be cremated, you get to see the $5,000 “cremation packages” padded with memorial videos, keepsake urns, and “optional” services you’re told are essential.

It wasn’t always this way. I should know. I wanted to be an embalmer back when I was 16 through my early 20s. I researched the entire industry just because I used to be a good little capitalist and wanted to know what would make me the most money without having to deal with people. You see, before the 1960s, funerals were modest, local, and often handled partly by the family. However, the corporate consolidation came along. Giants like Service Corporation International began quietly buying up small funeral homes, keeping their names, and centralizing operations. That’s when the real profiteering began.

Here’s how they squeeze the bereaved:

Casket markups of 200-400% over wholesale.
Burial vaults sold as “protection” for your loved one’s casket (they’re really just protecting cemetery landscaping.)
Embalming pushed as a requirement, even though it’s legally required in very few cases.
Bundled “packages” that hide inflated costs and make it harder to remove overpriced items.

The Federal Trade Commission tried to rein them in with the Funeral Rule in 1984, which requires itemized pricing, but industry lobbying watered it down. Enforcement is weak, and corporate funeral chains keep finding new ways to upsell when you’re least able to fight back.

The most obscene part? This predatory pricing works because it’s aimed at people in mourning; people who don’t want to “cheap out” on honoring a loved one. The guilt is baked into the business model.

Death should be a time for mourning and remembrance, not another transaction in the endless marketplace of American life, but in a country where every human need — from healthcare to housing — is for sale, it’s no surprise the final stop is too.

In the good old U S of A, they’ll tax you while you live, squeeze you while you work, and sell you dignity when you die.

Overthinking, Pandora’s Box, and the Mercy We Don’t Deserve

By someone who’s tired of dodging landmines in family group chats.

I posted a photo on Snapchat the other day—Bertrand Russell’s The History of Western Philosophy. I didn’t think much of it. Just one of those small, nerdy flexes you throw into the void. But then my aunt replied:

“I didn’t know there was such a thing, but I guess everything has some sort of philosophy.”

Okay, fair. Not everyone grew up reading Plato or spiraling into existential dread during sophomore year. I responded:

“Western civilization’s been overthinking everything for like 2,500 years. They had to write it down eventually. Even things like math and science have deep philosophical roots.”

Her response? “Some things are just overthought, and need to be left alone I think. Just my opinion.”

That’s when I felt it: that itch to argue. To start listing how “overthinking” gave us medicine, civil rights, space exploration, critical thinking, and the ability to ask whether the status quo even should be left alone.

But instead, I replied calmly:

“Sometimes overthinking is how we uncover the stuff hiding under the surface.”

She came back with:

“That could be really bad and in the long run not helpful. Kinda like Pandora’s box. But I understand some things need to be known.” I went full myth nerd:

“Yeah, opening Pandora’s box definitely unleashed chaos—but also hope was in there too. Can’t forget that part.”

Then came the turn I knew was coming:

“Yep, you are right on that. And mercy, which we don’t deserve.”

Ah. There it was. The theological twist. The Southern Baptist worldview shining through. Mercy as something we’re lucky to get, not something we’re entitled to. A cosmic handout, not a human right.

And that’s where I bit my tongue. Because yeah, I could’ve said that if mercy is real, it shouldn’t be conditional. Or that maybe people don’t deserve suffering either. Or maybe we do deserve mercy because we’re born into a broken system we didn’t ask for and spend our lives trying to make sense of it.

But I didn’t say any of that. I kept the peace. Not because I agreed, but because sometimes family isn’t where the fight lives.

Still, it stuck with me. The way generations talk past each other. The way questioning becomes “overthinking,” and curiosity becomes a threat to tradition. The way a simple book post turns into a theological minefield.

So here I am. Overthinking it, of course.

Just like the philosophers taught me to.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s where hope still lives.

The Existentially Moist Wish of Darlene Crumb

A friend of mine asked me to write a sequel to my last short story involving the genie. This is what I could come up with. I hope she enjoys it…

—

Darlene Crumb was a woman haunted by one, unrelenting truth: she was always a little bit damp. Not soaking wet. Not sweaty. Just perpetually… moist. Elbows. Neck. Behind the knees. The mystery persisted across climates, shampoos, and three failed marriages.

One Tuesday—because all the strangest things happen on Tuesdays—she wandered into the back of a defunct Payless Shoes, looking for nothing and finding everything.

There, underneath a pile of expired insoles and dusty Crocs, sat an antique humidifier. She plugged it in. It sparked. The fire alarm laughed. And then, in a cloud of grapefruit LaCroix mist, emerged the same genie. Hawaiian shirt. Aviators. Pursed lips of someone who had once dated an energy healer named “Blade.”

“You’ve summoned me,” he said. “One wish. No bartering. No do-overs. No wishing for more wishes unless you’re into recursive paradoxes.”

Darlene blinked, the condensation on her eyelashes catching the light like tragic disco balls.

“I want,” she said slowly, “to finally understand the universe. I want the truth. All of it.”

The genie’s brow did a little dance. “That’s the big one. Cosmic enlightenment. You sure?”

“Positive. I’ve been wet for 39 years and I think it’s related to everything.”

With a shrug and a snip-snap, the genie granted the wish.

Instantly, Darlene’s brain exploded—not physically, but conceptually. Her eyes dilated into portals of pure comprehension. She saw time as a Möbius strip braided into a cat’s cradle. She understood dark matter, gravity, and why bread always lands butter-side down.

She gasped.

“It’s all soup.”

Everything. Matter. Meaning. Morality. Relationships. Socks. Soup.

Existence was just soup, swirling in infinite flavors, none of them consistent, all of them burning the roof of your mouth if you tried too hard to enjoy them.

She wept.

Then laughed.

Then threw up alphabet pasta that spelled out THE VOID WAVES BACK.

For the next three weeks, Darlene became a guru. She wore bathrobes in public and answered all questions with the phrase, “Only the broth knows.” She gained a cult following among TikTok astrologers and people who read horoscopes ironically.

But her enlightenment began to curdle.

She couldn’t enjoy anything anymore. Romance? Soup. Art? Soup. Her favorite podcast? Two Blokes Talk Soup, suddenly too literal. She once screamed for 14 minutes in a Whole Foods because someone asked if she wanted bone broth.

Her moistness increased. Because, of course, what is soup, if not the ultimate damp?

Desperate, she found the genie again, this time running a hemp-scented vape bar called “Vaporwave Vespers.”

“You gave me enlightenment!” she hissed, dripping all over the floor. “Take it back!”

The genie looked up from his crossword. “‘Cosmic reversal’ isn’t in the contract. One wish per customer. Union rules.”

“But I’m unraveling!”

“You asked for the truth,” he said, handing her a complimentary kale-flavored vape pen. “Turns out the truth is kind of a wet noodle.”

Darlene now wanders the world wrapped in towels, whispering cryptic soup-based riddles to strangers in parking lots. Her cult disbanded after she declared celery “the key to death.” She exists beyond joy, beyond suffering, beyond dryness.

She knows the secrets of the universe.

And she deeply, deeply regrets it.

Moral? Never ask for everything. Especially from a genie who smells faintly of citrus and has strong opinions about ska music.

I Like the Way You Work It. No Dignity.

Everything is testing my patience today. For one thing the two dogs are restless and I just want them to settle down for the night, but that’s not my main issue. That’s just a minor inconvenience at the moment. They’ll eventually calm down. The main problem I’m having is family related. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it before, but my grandmother has dementia. I’ve been helping my mother take care of her for the past five years. My grandfather had it as well, but he passed three years ago (or maybe it was two years ago. I can’t remember.)

The rest of my family lives in their own little world of denial and seem to think that she’s going to get better. There’s no cure for dementia. It gradually gets worse until the person’s brain pretty much just withers away and they die. No one but my mom, my sister, and I see this for some reason.

At one point it was mentioned by one of my mom’s sisters that I do more to help with my grandmother and that triggered an “Excuse the merry fuck out of me!” response considering I do more to take care of the old bat than my aunt had ever done. I am someone who constantly says how much I do not want children and stand quite firm when it comes to that. I don’t want to take care of a child, much less a 90-year-old woman who acts like a child. If you don’t believe me then spend an afternoon with the woman and see. She pouts, throws tantrums, can’t wipe her ass (and I’m sure as fuck not going to wipe it for her. I leave that for my mom and aunts.)

I’m dealing with my own mental illness and on my particularly bad days it takes all I have to crawl out of bed. I do what I can because my mom asks me to do it and I want to help my mom since she’s done so much for me all these years. I know my mom doesn’t fully understand my mental illness, but that’s my fault for not really opening up about it like I should. She does understand a bit of it, though. She has also informed her sisters about it and that I’m not capable of taking care of someone else with a mental illness like dementia.

It seems like a game of catch when it comes to my grandmother, just tossing her around from one family member to the other. In all honesty, I wish they’d just put her in a home. That may sound cruel to some of you out there reading this, but I think it’d be the best thing for her. She can get constant care. My mom and one of her sisters both work full-time jobs, which is why I’ve stepped in over the past five years to help out. My mom’s other sister is retired and who the fuck knows why she doesn’t just take her? She’s too worried about it cutting into her vacations she takes with her husband, I suppose.

I’ve been stressed ever since my grandmother returned and I’ve been avoiding her in order to avoid a fight. I used to never swear around her, but there was a time a few months back where she was fighting me as far as taking her medication and I had to yell at her, “Take your fucking pills!” Do I sound like the kind of person suited for this fucking job? I didn’t think so, either.

I don’t know why living into old age is something people strive for. If you’re going to lose your mind then you might as well take yourself out because it’s not pretty. Fuck dying with dignity. There’s no such thing.