8 ms·

Isn’t this someone has to do? Making profits are not a bad thing. It’s a prerequisite for sustainable, growing business that provides better services over time.

Isn’t this someone has to do? Making profits are not a bad thing. It’s a prerequisite for sustainable, growing business that provides better services over time. Unfortunately, quality of the services provided has to correspond to payment received. If you are running a hospital , you are segregating patients into different rooms depending on money you get. This is not acceptable in education so we have government run those but does funeral services be government run? If no, then making profits is necessary and someone needs to do it.

lupire 5y ago
Someone does, but not a a growth at all costs VC-backed startup. While fictional, HBO's Six Feet Under touches on this.
cafard 5y ago
Thomas Lynch wrote a book that I remember as interesting as far as I read it, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393334876 https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393334876 .
beaconstudios 5y ago
Not everything has to happen via the medium of commerce or government. Funerals are something that is ideally suited to being a communal effort, or it would be if communal living weren't dying off.
- rualca 5y ago
  Wishing that a service should be provided by a community instead of a business does not address the fact that it is a service, and one which has a constant demand and an inherent need to be offloaded to a third party. Once specialization is demanded from the service, the "communal" label becomes meaningless.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    It /did/ used to be provided by communities. Funerals are traditionally handled by the church, an arrangement which seemed to work for a long time and doesn't contain the dilemma of impersonal and potentially exploitative interactions that entail commercial transactions. Communities have specialisations too. Unfortunately the community seems to be dying with the secularisation of society which only leaves government and business to tackle things.
    - rualca 5y ago
      > Funerals are traditionally handled by the church, You're somehow assuming that a religious organization does not operate as a corporation, even down to the invoices.
      - beaconstudios 5y ago
        Charging money does not make something a corporation. Though I'm aware of the financialised nature of some American churches, I'm talking from a British perspective where that isn't the case (as far as I am aware, I don't personally attend church). Either way, I don't think there's as much moral hazard if you're charging someone at cost as part of a communal service, compared to trying to squeeze as much profit as possible out of grieving families.
        rualca 5y ago
        > Charging money does not make something a corporation. In your opinion, other than the different taxation schemes, what's the difference between a religious organization and a corporation? Specially if both types or org charge to provide the exact same service.
        beaconstudios 5y ago
        if you mean some televangelist megachurch then sure, they're basically the same thing. I was thinking of local parishes, which have historically existed as a communal centre and hub of support for a community. I genuinely don't understand how you'd think that enlisting a professional service versus your local community to deal with a bereavement would not be different? That's like saying that the only difference between paying somebody to be your friend versus having a legitimate friend is only different because money changed hands?
curryst 5y ago
Death services tread a very fine moral line. You're working with people who usually have no idea what they're doing, who are in a time of crisis in their lives, and who are trying to fulfill the wishes of someone who is now dead and can't provide any input. There's a very fine line between providing someone services that will help them reach closure, and selling someone nostalgic snake oil so you have a few more dollars than you did yesterday. It's not something I would get involved in. I feel like the only two ways it could go for me would be either compartmentalizing and becoming a greedy monster, or not compartmentalizing and becoming totally swallowed up by the sorrow I'm exposed to every day. Many kudos to the people that can be around that sorrow, be unaffected and yet still not become a monster.
rozab 5y ago
Pushing overpriced useless junk to emotionally vulnerable people? No. There is a necessary service of digging a hole and putting a corpse in a box into it, but the whole business of $10k coffins and embalming and such is both unnecessary and quite unique to the US.
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  Expensive funerals are far from "unique to the US". The US spends substantially less as a proportion of income than Japan, China, Germany, Netherlands, the UK, and New Zealand, and is within a couple percent of a half dozen other countries. [1] https://businesstech.co.za/news/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/SunLife.png https://businesstech.co.za/news/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/S...
  - rozab 5y ago
    I did look this up and found slightly different numbers: https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/how-much-does-a-funeral-cost https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/how-much-d... https://nfda.org/news/statistics https://nfda.org/news/statistics But I would maintain that the invasive practice of embalming is unnecessary and unusual elsewhere in the world.
    - wutbrodo 5y ago
      I think those are consistent with the numbers I found
  - floor2 5y ago
    Ha, I think the internet needs a new term like Godwin's Rule or Gell-Mann Amnesia or whatever for the constant claims of "This only happens in America" or "This problem is worse in America than anywhere else" and then the reality is that the US is in line with averages or norms in other countries or cultures.
    - wutbrodo 5y ago
      Anything that's a cheap way to get midwit upvotes is an unsolvable problem as far as I can tell.

lupire 5y ago

Someone does, but not a a growth at all costs VC-backed startup. While fictional, HBO's Six Feet Under touches on this.

cafard 5y ago

Thomas Lynch wrote a book that I remember as interesting as far as I read it, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393334876 https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393334876 .

beaconstudios 5y ago

Not everything has to happen via the medium of commerce or government. Funerals are something that is ideally suited to being a communal effort, or it would be if communal living weren't dying off.

rualca 5y ago
Wishing that a service should be provided by a community instead of a business does not address the fact that it is a service, and one which has a constant demand and an inherent need to be offloaded to a third party. Once specialization is demanded from the service, the "communal" label becomes meaningless.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  It /did/ used to be provided by communities. Funerals are traditionally handled by the church, an arrangement which seemed to work for a long time and doesn't contain the dilemma of impersonal and potentially exploitative interactions that entail commercial transactions. Communities have specialisations too. Unfortunately the community seems to be dying with the secularisation of society which only leaves government and business to tackle things.
  - rualca 5y ago
    > Funerals are traditionally handled by the church, You're somehow assuming that a religious organization does not operate as a corporation, even down to the invoices.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      Charging money does not make something a corporation. Though I'm aware of the financialised nature of some American churches, I'm talking from a British perspective where that isn't the case (as far as I am aware, I don't personally attend church). Either way, I don't think there's as much moral hazard if you're charging someone at cost as part of a communal service, compared to trying to squeeze as much profit as possible out of grieving families.
      - rualca 5y ago
        > Charging money does not make something a corporation. In your opinion, other than the different taxation schemes, what's the difference between a religious organization and a corporation? Specially if both types or org charge to provide the exact same service.
        beaconstudios 5y ago
        if you mean some televangelist megachurch then sure, they're basically the same thing. I was thinking of local parishes, which have historically existed as a communal centre and hub of support for a community. I genuinely don't understand how you'd think that enlisting a professional service versus your local community to deal with a bereavement would not be different? That's like saying that the only difference between paying somebody to be your friend versus having a legitimate friend is only different because money changed hands?

curryst 5y ago

Death services tread a very fine moral line. You're working with people who usually have no idea what they're doing, who are in a time of crisis in their lives, and who are trying to fulfill the wishes of someone who is now dead and can't provide any input. There's a very fine line between providing someone services that will help them reach closure, and selling someone nostalgic snake oil so you have a few more dollars than you did yesterday. It's not something I would get involved in. I feel like the only two ways it could go for me would be either compartmentalizing and becoming a greedy monster, or not compartmentalizing and becoming totally swallowed up by the sorrow I'm exposed to every day. Many kudos to the people that can be around that sorrow, be unaffected and yet still not become a monster.

rozab 5y ago

Pushing overpriced useless junk to emotionally vulnerable people? No. There is a necessary service of digging a hole and putting a corpse in a box into it, but the whole business of $10k coffins and embalming and such is both unnecessary and quite unique to the US.

wutbrodo 5y ago
Expensive funerals are far from "unique to the US". The US spends substantially less as a proportion of income than Japan, China, Germany, Netherlands, the UK, and New Zealand, and is within a couple percent of a half dozen other countries. [1] https://businesstech.co.za/news/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/SunLife.png https://businesstech.co.za/news/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/S...
- rozab 5y ago
  I did look this up and found slightly different numbers: https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/how-much-does-a-funeral-cost https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/how-much-d... https://nfda.org/news/statistics https://nfda.org/news/statistics But I would maintain that the invasive practice of embalming is unnecessary and unusual elsewhere in the world.
  - wutbrodo 5y ago
    I think those are consistent with the numbers I found
- floor2 5y ago
  Ha, I think the internet needs a new term like Godwin's Rule or Gell-Mann Amnesia or whatever for the constant claims of "This only happens in America" or "This problem is worse in America than anywhere else" and then the reality is that the US is in line with averages or norms in other countries or cultures.
  - wutbrodo 5y ago
    Anything that's a cheap way to get midwit upvotes is an unsolvable problem as far as I can tell.