to be saturation point with everyone and everything wanting me to pay them a subscription fee?

[Brystar]

There is a well known chef and cookbook writer whose newsletter I subscribe to, I have all their books and even paid £100 to buy an online course that they made to teach various cooking methods. I love their work, am a big fan of their books and recipes and feel like their work has really helped me to become a better cook.

Today in that newsletter they said how they were moving their online blog and content to a paid platform where I could pay a monthly fee to read their musings about food and get access to recipes which are already in their book which I bought so it would be paying to read a blog.

I get that if you have an online audience and you look around and see everyone moving their content behind a paywall that it is quite likely you feel like a bit of an idiot if you don't do it yourself. I also understand if people are actually providing a service of some kind or producing courses but for lots of these paid sites it is just milking your fans for cash at this point.

Lots of musicians and youtube people are doing it and for not very much and sure it is only a few pounds a month but everyone wants you to pay and I feel like I have total monthly subscription fatigue and anyone asking me to pay to get a link to their spotify playlist of the month, their monthly mood board and exclusive behind the scenes musings is just off putting to me now.

Add to that there are the various apps and bits of software which want you to pay £8.99 a month or more when it used to be a one time payment. Hairdressers locally now are saying that you need to be on their subscription plan to ensure you can get an appointment, ditto for any beauty service.

I do get it makes good business sense but as a consumer, a customer it is wearing me down and is putting me off the people who keep insisting on this model.

Have you ever heard of an author called George Orwell - I'm assured that he's rather well-known...?

Fair enough if you personally believe that the people behind communism really did/do want themselves to be treated just like everybody else - and maybe view the whole 'some are more equal than others' idea as nothing but a fairy tale; but I think it takes quite a dim outlook to not see the stark parallels between communism and capitalism, even though they may (be designed to) on the surface seem like night and day.

That’s the point, communism has only ever been a political theory. As I’ve said before on MN, in reality “communism” has only ever been a variation of capitalism with smaller rooms at the top and a more uniformly downtrodden underclass.

So why bring it into this discussion at all? Orwell was a socialist against totalitarianism btw, not a mouthbreathing reds-under-the-bed McCarthyist.

Eh? You were the one who brought it up and then said how stupid it was to find a link between the two - and then you're now firmly acknowledging that link?!

I never said that Orwell was personally a proponent of what he was writing about/warning about/observing.

Open Office - you can open Excel spreadsheets with it, and it's free / pay what you feel.

We've been using it for free for years now.

No. You were the one who called this rampant capitalism “lightly repackaged communism”. I’m the one who called your comment stupid for suggesting that communism (that has only ever been another branch of capitalism) is the culprit, rather than unfettered capitalism itself.

It doesn’t matter what Orwell’s opinions were. He was a writer and critic who made certain observations and predictions which some subscribe to. He didn’t call any shots or redefine anything.

I came across a couple on a budgetting type program who were shocked when they realised they were paying out £400 a month on subscriptions.

I can easily see how it could be done, gym, tv, music, Microsoft, coffee, wine, ring door bell, a handful of apps.

Lots of apps and streaming services seem low cost "it's only 8 quid" but added together aren't cheap

The Daily Mail has recently added a paywall. All the celeb gossip and world news type stories are free but all the opinion stuff is behind a paywall.

Amazon Prime have done this twice in the past couple of years, by putting Prime Music behind a separate paywall and adding adverts to Prime Video that you have to pay additional money to remove. It’s so tiresome,

It does sound a bit like going around in circles... but if I understand your point correctly (which I'm by no means confident of), then I agree that this is both capitalism AND communism in whatever state it presents itself.

I think it's mainly the Klaus Schwab comment that sounded to me like 'classic' communism - but, as you say, that is also just a branch of capitalism.

Whatever labels are attached to it - and I don't want to derail the thread - I think we agree(?) that it's people/companies seeking to change and control our consumer behaviour and force us into models that suit them, even though we may despise and object to them; rather than the 'old-fashioned' method of seeking to gain reward from identifying and respecting what the customer truly wants and then providing them with it.

Wow! The very definition of people who 'quite fancy the idea of budgeting' rather than actually needing to budget!

Yes, I've even noticed it with work subscriptions - content gets carved out but we get charged the same, or more, for a less comprehensive product. I suspect we might discontinue one, but I am not the decision maker, so I can only complain to the person who is and hope they cancel it next time it comes up for renewal.

I use Libre Office. Also free and can open and save all Microsoft programs in several formats

No they needed to budget, they were skint at the end of every month, no clue where their money was going.

The programme had got them to go though their accounts see where their money was actually going.

I hate subscription services for the most part, but they have advantages in very specific circumstances. I work for a charity, part of the conditions of funding we receive is that we have to meet certain expectations around IT, including no software that is no longer supported. An office subscription means our software is never out of date - as long as people allow updates. It's also cheap/largely free for charities.

On the other hand, while I would guess the Adobe subscription model works for many graphic designers - they need up to date software, the full package when it was a one off payment was incredibly expensive - for a small charity it works out prohibitively expensive which is why we went for Affinity instead as it was a one off payment.

For home users though, it's nearly always infuriating.

It appears we are in agreement about the main point, that capitalism has become a law unto itself, and maybe there is something to be said about it mimicking “communist” subjugation in making everyone pay increasingly more for less - with those who can least afford to finding themselves hit hardest.

But how can you spend £400 a month on subscriptions and not have a clue where the money is going? How did they not go under financially in the meantime?

I'd understand if a very rich person didn't really pay much attention to their monthly direct debits; but did these people never look at a bank statement at all?!

@TiddlyCove I couldn't agree more. I foolishly once signed up to JustFab, the online clothing shop, not realising that once I made a purchase, they automatically took £35 out of my bank account every month if I didn't make a purchase that month. The trouble I had trying to unsubscribe from them was off the charts. I also very nearly got scammed on Vinted last week. Somebody pretending to want to buy something from me - it sent me to an online chat where whoever was behind it kept telling me I could only accept the payment from the buyer if I had £250 in my bank account because they needed to remove it and automatically put it back in again to ensure that it was a real bank account!! I dread to think how many people are taken in by this.

I also use Libre Office - in fact this thread prompted me to update it as I'd been using an old version for a few years.

They knew they were skint at the end of the month but had never worked out why.

It's fairly obvious go through the bank statement but to a young couple first house, they just hadn't worked it out. Possibly been an element of they hadn't needed to budget when living at home. So yes they ended a load of subscriptions very quickly.

I just wish I could remember the name of the program.

Bank accounts there another one, pay £10 a month to get various benefits with your bank account that you'll probably not use - I'll stick to my free on and buy what I need.