Bah!

This is ridiculous. If the trains were always late, like the three hour late one i caught in India, then i could allow for that; factor it into the journey.
With them being late or cancelled (and this is the train companies stats) 10% of the time, you never know if you're going to be left in the lurch, yet they're still on time regularly enough to prevent most people from making a formal complaint.
Is this part of a larger trend? Has the current society found exactly the lowest level of comfort that humans need to be at to prevent them from "taking matters into their own hands"? Are we, as a whole, better off than any other time in history, or are we still stuck under the same repression that's inherent in any hierarchical system, just kept distracted better? there's a lot of evidence both ways, but what if better living, health and educational conditions are just more effective ways of making us more productive?
Ikea's latest slogan, "if your kitchen costs less, you have to work less", is systematic of this point of view. It suggests that if you work hard, you'll get a reward, and completely ignores the fact that, probably, most people have to take a loan out to afford a new kitchen, which means they'll actually end up paying more. And don't think that Ikea doesn't know this. They're more than happy to lend you some of their profit, they've made out of you, so that they can get their greedy claws on even more of your hard come by cash. (It's not just Ikea, look at how many other stores have credit schemes.)
why do we stand for this? why do i put up with spending most of my waking hours, during the most productive years of my life, stuck behind a desk, dealing with people who take it all too seriously?
at the moment, it's so i can pay the mortgage, which will keep me tied down for the next 25 years. Is that enough reward? Evidently, yes.