Bacon Scrapins – “Monetized!”

© by Barry S. Wolfe

Bacon Scrapins are the little bits of meat left in the greasy fry pan. They’re tasty, but the ‘nutrition’ needs searching for. This tale is a bacon scrapin.

Dan and I were on one of our usual wanders along the paths of our nine-stopsign-sized community. At this point, we were pacing the ups and downs of the rolling landscape through the wooded portion of our habitat.

“It looks like they started to cut up some of the fallen trees’ trunks,” acknowledged Dan.

“Going through that phase dictated by the M.O.E. about allowing naturally fallen trees to naturally decompose, and allow natural ingredients to feed the new growth didn’t last very long,” I replied.

“The trees here are mostly about a similar age and they’re in the second half of their life spans for sure,” Dan added.

“There were so many dying, being blown over in storms, suffering attacks from natural predators so quickly that they’ were starting to pile up. It would take a hundred years for a tree piled on top of others to rot into compost. The bugs and stuff can’t get at them easily up in the air,” I suggested.

“Cutting them up into manageable lengths, chopping them up and maybe getting some run through a chipper or mulching machine would speed up the process,” Dan considered.

“That would be like producing sawdust quickly and putting it back onto the soil to decompose,” I said.

“It would make it safer walking through here and make it less jumbled looking. All these fallen, broken, twisted branches could really slice an ankle and badly hurt an unsuspecting walker,” Dan cautioned.

“Talking of sliced, I’ve been hacked. Again.” I complained.

“Hacked? With what? An axe? Where were you hacked? You’re walking fine enough!” Dan said.

“Hacked. On the computer. On my visagebook account. The one I set up when our grandkids were born, to keep up-to-date with events.

The one with all the pictures and updates from family and friends. My son pointed it out to me again. He says someone made a mirror account of my ‘real’ one, using my heading photo, my facial picture, two of my ‘friends’ were listed, but with a wrong birthdate and wrong university name,” I added.

“What’s a ‘mirror’ account?” Dan asked.

“Like I said, they create an account with my same name, from a different computer address or something, but they make the page look exactly like my real one. They block me from seeing the account page, but everyone else on my contacts list can. If someone on my list replies to the mirror page, they get access to that person’s list as well, and so on, and so on. The contacts spread exponentially and they can get to thousands of new people quickly. They start sending messages out that gradually give them information about all those people which they can use to try to ruin your reputation, to sell stuff, solicit donations, send out fake appeals for money like demanding you send “me”/them a $50 Apple purchase card to cash in the save the life of a relative. You know, just like the scams on elderly folks.”

“I’ve got one of those visagebook accounts too. I’ve heard about hackers but I haven’t been affected yet,” Dan said.

“The other time I was hacked someone was sending vulgar stuff from me to females on my contact list. One of my friends warned me and I changed my password. It stopped for a while.

This time my son showed me how to contact visagebook to have the ‘mirror’ account deleted, but by then the horse is out of the barn.” I commented.

“Everybody’s trying to scam a buck, somehow!” Dan complained.

“I looked up the terms of use of visagebook. They say that I, as a user, “own” all of the content and information I post on visagebook. And they’re doing this for free? The oldest, most basic piece of wisdom known to man is, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch!” Scammers are trying to make money from my posted information, visagebook is also making money from my information.

Some business professor in the States said that visagebook users have to understand that the reason the company is so profitable is that our data is gold. We’re giving it away for free.” I mumbled bitterly.

As we were walking out of the shadows of the wooded area into the more open pathway at the boundary line fence Dan said, “The provincial government is no different than visagebook.”

“How so?” I inquired.

“You know that when you do some things, you have to pay a fee to the government for them to process the information. Some of it you’d think was personal and private, but not all stuff is private, and may be of interest to others.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Well, for example, when you bought your house in here, you or your lawyer had to register the property with the Ontario land registry office. The registration says who sold it to you, how much you paid, what taxes were paid on the transaction, whether you have a mortgage, who the mortgage is with, and how much the mortgage is. It may even say that you got it for free from someone with an explanation of how that supposedly happened.” Dan explained.

“So, the government collects this information at public offices, with public servants doing the paperwork, all paid for by taxpayers. Is that information public or private?” I asked.

“It’s public information until the government gives it to a private company to manage it,” Dan replied.

“What? It’s public. But then the government gives it away to a private company and it becomes private to them. Why?” I demanded to know.

“Simple. Money. If the government has to manage it, like every time your house sells or has a mortgage or other lien registered, or something else on the deed changes, then some public servant would have to process that work. That means public sector workers would have to be paid. The government doesn’t want to pay them for the work because it will show as another debit expense on their books, and some governments don’t want citizens to see how much it actually costs to do stuff that we take for granted. So, they take the cost off the government’s books and give the work to a private company so they can charge you for the documents and then pay a small percentage as a kickback to the province. Smoke and mirrors!” Dan said.

“Who is this private company?” I asked.

“They’re called Terranacious LP. They live up to their name. They are tenacious about your land. They have an exclusive concession from the government to run the land registry documents business. No competition. They set their own terms and conditions. That’s really in the best interests of a transparent, accountable democracy, right? The company brought in over $600 million in six months.” Dan replied.

“The province authorizes a private company, this Terranacious LP, to bring in that much and won’t pay public employees, with security and benefits, to do the work out of the take? The province gets a kickback, why not just take it all, pay expenses, and bring in a profit for the general revenue of the province? This company isn’t doing it to break even!” I postulated.

“Remember. It’s political. Some politicians don’t like government. They don’t like “big” government that actually employs citizens to do the essentials of government. Some politicians prefer that a private company makes a profit off you to actually bringing in probably more money to the government coffers if it was done ‘in-house’.

Politicians have to get elected. Politicians need donors to finance their election campaigns. Politicians like to get cushy positions on corporate Boards after they leave politics. You said it yourself earlier, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch!” It’s about the money dude!” Dan added flippantly.

“So, what if I wanted to check up on someone who is running as a candidate for a political office? What if I wanted to know whether he actually owns the property he gives as his address? What if I want to know if he has a mortgage or a lien on the property, for how much, and who holds the mortgage, whether it’s in his name or someone else’s name? Can I get that ‘public’ information?” I asked.

“Yes. But you have to pay a fee for it. And everyone who wants to know that information has to pay for it separately. The terms of usage, in the Terranacious LP monopoly say you cannot make a copy of the document and give it to others to look at, post it on your website.” Don added.

“So how do I tell others if I find that a candidate is a scammer, misrepresenting himself, in fact lying to the voters if I can’t post the document on the website?” I asked.

“Just tell them what you’ve found, I guess. You can’t photocopy and reprint a whole book and give it away, but there’s nothing to prevent you from telling others the story in your own words. They have a monopoly on printed information in this democracy. You can tell, but you can’t copy the document.” Dan suggested.

“Good grief. Scammers on visagebook, twattler. Massager, minutegram. You can’t prove a politician is scamming voters by showing documentary proof without everyone paying a fee to Terranacious LP to see a copy of it.

Is there no information that, in some way, is not monetized?” I asked the sky.

As we approached my driveway I said, “Let’s sit on my back deck, have a cold drink of water and drown our sorrows about monetized knowledge.”

NOTE: Characters and names in this Bacon Scrapins tale are fictional.

You may email appropriate comments for the writer to thisiswilmot@gmail.com