this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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Computers, phones, cars, TVs, everything now is a vehicle to get you hooked on some subscription plan, the same way cigarettes are simply a delivery method for the real product being sold, nicotine. For computers, Linux is a fine alternative. You might have to tweak a bit but it's not the 2000s anymore, a lot of distros are easy to use. For cars though... My hope is that soon, these living rooms on wheels where everything you do needs a monthly subscription become annoying enough that some underdog car company sees a market and comes up with a dumb model that doesn't need to be connected to anything to work 100%. Or maybe I'm just getting old.
As soon as that happens they will start dropping the price of "smart" cars to undercut the market. That's how monopolies work. One major reason they can do that is that a dumb car model sees the manufacturer and dealer paid exactly once. The smart car model sells your data and requires maintenance to a point where some cars just won't start if it isn't done. This renders continuing income to both the manufacturer and the dealer.
For proof of concept, look at the smart tv market. Dumb tvs largely aren't around because the price of the hardware is subsidized by the money they make collecting your data, so a dumb tv of the same specs is always prohibitively expensive compared to a smart tv.
That can, will, and in some ways is already happening to the car market.
Here's to hoping connected cars won't be obligated through legislation.
Effectively already started to happen. Restrictions on use and higher tax and other charges for older cars designed to “encourage” people to buy newer ones, nearly all of which are in some way connected.