The Forced Customer

If I had to sum up what it feels like to live in America in 2025, I’d say this: every birth certificate should come stamped with two words — Forced Customer. From the moment we’re born, every institution is wired to treat us not as citizens, not as people, but as batteries. We’re charged up, drained constantly, and designed to burn out. Planned obsolescence isn’t just for iPhones anymore; it’s for people.

Every month, every paycheck, every bill is another extraction. Not a fair exchange for services, not an earned cost for value. It feels more like tribute to a mob boss: pay up or lose the basics you need to survive.

And I live this, every single day.

CenterPoint Energy: The Tribute Collector

Take electricity. My monthly bill with CenterPoint is often higher than my car payment. Think about that — I can drive a 3,000-pound machine down the highway for less money than it costs to keep the lights on.

The kicker? I don’t even feel like I’m paying for power. I feel like I’m paying for permission to exist. When CenterPoint sends a bill, it doesn’t read like a receipt. It reads like an ultimatum.

And the numbers back that up. Nationally, residential electricity prices rose about 13% from 2022 to 2025, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61776)). In Indiana, it’s worse. In February 2025, regulators approved a new rate increase for CenterPoint, authorizing millions more in revenue that landed right on customer bills (Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission approval, 2025 (https://www.in.gov/oucc/electric/key-cases-by-utility/centerpoint-vectren-electric-rates/)).

Meanwhile, I live in an old campus house. It would cost $10,000–$20,000 to weatherize the place — insulation, windows, sealing — money no landlord is ever going to spend. So, I pay inflated bills forever, trapped in a system designed to keep bleeding me dry.

That’s what it means to be a “forced customer.” No choice, no real competition, just mandatory extraction.

Bankruptcy, Bad Credit, and Paying for Money

I didn’t do life in the “right” order. Family came first, then school, then divorce, then remarriage, with a few medical crises in between. And those crises weren’t optional. At one point, despite having double insurance, surgeries left me staring at $120,000 in debt. What do you do with that? You file for bankruptcy. There’s no other path when the system hands you a bill for saving your own life.

But bankruptcy never really goes away. It follows you like a shadow, waiting for the next time you try to climb up. Later, when I decided to go back to school, I worked four part-time jobs while studying, and I still left with $80,000 in debt — not for tuition, but just to survive. Rent, food, clothing, gas. The costs of living don’t pause because you’re trying to improve yourself.

And here’s where the nickel-and-diming gets particularly vicious: bad credit becomes a tax. Two people can walk into the same car dealership, make the same income, and buy the same car. The one with good credit pays one price. I pay thousands more, not for the car, but for the money. It’s called “risk-based pricing.” Banks call it responsible. I call it extortion.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has shown that borrowers with lower credit scores routinely face interest rates double or triple what prime borrowers pay, even when the product is the same (CFPB report on credit cards and pricing disparities (https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/how-your-credit-score-affects-how-much-you-pay-for-credit/)). Risk-based pricing turns past medical bills, divorce, or job loss into a life sentence where you pay more forever.

Think about that battery metaphor again. Every time I try to recharge, a better job, a degree, a second chance, the system plugs into me and drains more out. I’m not just paying for goods or services. I’m paying rent on the ability to participate in society at all.

Education: How “Free” Costs Me $135 Every Paycheck

Everybody loves to say education is the ticket upward. “Go back to school, get another degree, change your life.” So, I did. I took advantage of tuition benefits that were supposed to make it “free.” But nothing is free.

Every two weeks, $109 disappears from my paycheck. Why? Because the government counts my tuition benefit as income. Money I never touch, money I never actually see, is taxed as though it went straight into my pocket. The IRS spells this out clearly: some tuition reductions and benefits are taxable, especially for graduate-level work or when certain thresholds are exceeded (IRS Publication 970 (https://www.irs.gov/publications/p970)). Translation: the education they tell you to pursue becomes an automatic pay cut.

On top of that, there are fees. Universities never let those go. My fees aren’t covered, so I had to set up a payment plan. That’s another $25 gone from every paycheck. Add it up: $135 less in my hands every two weeks; not for food, not for clothes, not for gas, but for the privilege of trying to get ahead.

That’s the paradox. The system tells you to climb, then charges you tolls on every rung of the ladder. If I were paying tuition out-of-pocket, the hole would be even deeper; loans stacked on top of loans, interest compounding into another form of planned obsolescence. But even the so-called “benefit” version bleeds me a little every paycheck.

It’s the same battery logic. You can’t recharge when the charger itself is wired to siphon power.

Banks: Fees for Being Poor

For fifteen years, I banked with Heritage Federal. Fifteen years of watching them rob me with a smile. Here’s how it works:

Say my $25 gym membership tries to hit my account, but I’m a few dollars short. The bank doesn’t cover it. They don’t float me the $25. Instead, they decline the charge and slap me with a $30 overdraft fee. Now I owe them $30, and I still owe the gym $25. So, a $25 transaction I couldn’t afford just cost me $55.

That’s not a safety net, that’s punishment. And it’s not rare. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has tracked this for years: overdraft and non-sufficient funds (NSF) fees typically range from $20–$35 per hit, and they add up to billions each year (CFPB, Overdraft/NSF Fee Data (https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/data-point-bank-overdraft-nsf-fee-revenue/)). Even as total fee revenue has dropped since 2019, the households paying them are still paying dearly.

Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore. I rerouted my income into Cash App. Say what you want about fintech, but at least they try to soften the blow. Cash App gives me a $200 cushion, go negative, and as long as you pay it back, no fee. They’ll even loan you money: $100 borrowed costs $5. That’s not charity, but compared to $30 penalties for nothing, it feels like mercy.

Still, let’s not kid ourselves. Cash App isn’t a savior. It’s another nickel-and-dime system. Whether it’s $5 here or $30 there, you’re always paying extra just to not fall through the cracks. It’s survival as a subscription.

Again, think of the battery. A bank doesn’t recharge you. It drains you when you’re weakest — exactly when you need the energy most.

Buy Now, Pay Later for Groceries

Here’s what it looks like to feed a family in 2025: I walk into Walmart with $200. I check out, then I walk back out and flip it into four payments through Afterpay. Then I put that same $200 back in my Cash App and borrow it right back. Suddenly I’ve got $400 worth of groceries, which still isn’t enough for two weeks when you’re feeding three people. Most months, we run out of food two or three days before payday.

This isn’t luxury spending. This is ramen, cereal, chicken, produce, and bread. Yet even basics have been swallowed by the Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) economy. And I’m not alone. Surveys show that millions of Americans now use BNPL to pay for groceries and essentials, not just clothes or gadgets. A 2024 LendingTree survey found that 27% of BNPL users relied on it for groceries, and younger and lower-income households were most likely to do so (LendingTree, 2024 (https://www.lendingtree.com/credit-cards/buy-now-pay-later-statistics/)).

The pitch is simple: pay later, live today. The reality is another layer of debt, another set of micro-payments that pile up with everything else. BNPL companies frame themselves as “empowering” — but when groceries require financing, empowerment isn’t the right word. Desperation is.

It’s the same planned-obsolescence logic: keep the battery running, but only just. You never get a full charge. You just get enough to limp to the next plug-in.

The Everyday Squeeze: Food, Internet, Gaming, and Survival

Groceries used to be the one place you could count on getting by. Not anymore. Two hundred dollars in a cart at Walmart is a joke; you carry it out in two bags. Four hundred dollars is what it actually takes to feed my family for two weeks, and even then, the pantry runs dry before payday. And that’s not some exaggeration. Food-at-home prices rose 25% between 2019 and 2023, according to the USDA (USDA Food Price Outlook (https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-price-outlook/)). It seems like the upward costs have no end in sight. And, once food goes up, it doesn’t go back down.

So, what do you do when the groceries run out? Eating out? Forget it. My favorite spot — Yak & Yeti — runs $30 for a single meal. Fast food is barely cheaper, and it’s not food I want in my body. Dining out is no longer a treat; it’s a luxury, something I may do once in a blue moon.

Then there’s the internet. It’s not optional. Every part of my job, teaching, advising, and creating, requires it. Every part of life, really, from paying bills to accessing healthcare. But internet service in America remains among the most expensive in the world relative to speed (OECD Broadband Statistics (https://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/broadband-statistics/)). Without it, I’d be locked out of my livelihood. So, I pay, not because I want to, but because there’s no alternative.

Phones are the same. You don’t buy a phone anymore; you lease it for three years, death by monthly payments. By the time it’s finally paid off, the battery won’t hold a charge. I can pay hundreds to swap the battery, or I can buy a new one, which is exactly what the industry wants. Average smartphone lifespans hover around 2–4 years before performance and support drop off (Statista, Smartphone Replacement Cycle (https://www.statista.com/statistics/619788/smartphone-replacement-cycle/)). Planned obsolescence in its purest form. My phone and I share the same fate: used until we no longer hold a charge.

Even my downtime gets taxed. Video games, once my favorite escape, now cost $70 each,  plus $20 expansions, plus the yearly sequel that makes the last one obsolete, plus subscription fees just to play online. If I want to relax, I must buy a ticket to do it. Streaming services? The same story. You pay to keep the lights on, and then you pay to keep yourself sane.

This is what nickel-and-dimed looks like up close. It’s not just the big bills, rent, electricity, and insurance. It’s the death by a thousand swipes. Every necessity, every pleasure, every corner of life has been turned into a microtransaction. And when you add them up, it’s not micro at all.

It’s exactly what I teach my students about in advertising: planned obsolescence. The business model isn’t to sell you something once. It’s to design products, services, and systems so that you’re always paying again, and again, and again. Human beings treated as disposable goods. Batteries built to drain and fail.

Housing, Landlords, and the Bigger Picture

I live in an old house on campus. On paper, it’s a deal, more space for less rent than anywhere else in town. But when the winter bills roll in, the truth comes out. Drafty windows, no insulation, ancient wiring. You could pour $10,000–$20,000 into weatherizing it, but no landlord ever will. Why would they? They’re not the ones paying the electric bill. I am.

And so, month after month, I bleed money into CenterPoint. Not because I’m wasteful, not because I’m reckless, but because the system is set up that way. Landlords collect rent. Utilities collect surcharges. I’m the one caught in the middle, forced to fund everyone else’s profit margins.

This isn’t just my story. National data shows that renters are far more likely than homeowners to live in energy-inefficient housing, and they shoulder the cost in higher bills (U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Burden Report (https://www.energy.gov/eere/slsc/maps/energy-burden)). Poor households spend as much as three times more of their income on utilities than wealthier ones. In other words, the less you have, the more you pay for the basics.

It’s the same logic everywhere. Poverty isn’t just a lack of money. It’s a business model. The system is engineered so that those with the least are charged the most, in overdraft fees, in interest rates, and in inflated bills for drafty homes. You’re punished not just for being poor, but for ever having been poor.

This is the double standard that defines American life in 2025. The institutions that claim to provide, such as banks, landlords, utilities, and even universities, are structured to extract. You’re not a customer by choice. You’re a forced customer. And the longer you play the game, the more obvious it becomes: it isn’t designed for you to win.

Like every other part of life, housing fits the battery metaphor. I’m not meant to thrive here. I’m meant to last just long enough to keep paying the bill.

The Battery, Planned Obsolescence, and Violence

Here’s the part that most people miss: I’m not a failure in this system. I’m an overachiever. I teach, I advise, I design, I produce. I give back to my students, my neighborhood, my city, my state. I don’t just do my job; I pour myself into making everything around me better.

And yet, despite all that, I’m punished. Punished with higher utility bills, punished with taxed tuition “benefits,” punished with bank fees, punished with groceries on layaway, punished with phones designed to die the day I finish paying them off.

That’s the scam. The better I get, the more they take. The more I contribute, the more I’m extracted from. It’s not personal failure, it’s systemic design.

This is why the battery metaphor isn’t just clever; it’s true. Think about your phone. At first, the battery lasts all day. But as time goes on, every charge holds less. You find yourself plugging it in more often, until eventually it can’t make it through the morning. Then the company tells you it’s time for a new one.

That’s what’s happening to us. Human beings are being treated as consumables. Our energy, our labor, our money, drained until we can’t hold a charge. Then, instead of fixing the system, they toss us aside and move on to the next. That’s not just bad economics. That’s violence.

And it’s not the kind of violence you see on the evening news. It’s quieter. It’s the violence of bills that arrive higher every month. The violence of overdraft fees that hit when you’re already down. The violence of working three jobs and still choosing between food and electricity.

We’re not just nickel-and-dimed to death. We’re planned for obsolescence. And until we call it what it is — systemic violence dressed up as everyday life — nothing will change.

Because here’s the truth: I am not a disposable battery. None of us are. And it’s time we stop letting the system treat us like we are.