Savage Bargains

Turns out that it's not really a sale until there's a body count. Black Friday, indeed.

Americans are masters of feeling oppressed by penury in the middle of the one of the wealthiest nations on the planet. Marketers take advantage of this by offering "doorbuster" (in this case, quite literally, it turns out) deal on a few selected items, and creating an incentive for people to be the first in line to "save money" to snap up items that they likely would have bypassed under normal conditions. The public responds with excitement and by piling "bargains" into their shopping carts, with little thought and perhaps less restraint. And in the end, no-one is responsible. The shoppers were upset, that even though a man had just been killed, they were being asked to leave the store, and Wal-Mart offered up the standard and meaningless "thoughts and prayers."

I don't know that there is any such thing as a good way to die, but being trampled to death by crazed Wal-Mart shoppers seems like a particularly bad and pointless way to go.