It looks like the car companies have figured out a way to make new vehicles more “affordable” . . . by charging buyers more for things that used to be standard. For instance, Ford is apparently hitting buyers of the Mach e “Mustang” – which is a five-door electric crossover – with a $495 charge for the frunk that was previously standard. It is something like charing people extra for air in the tires.
Ford is not the only car company doing this, either. Apparently, if you want a storage area in the Dodge Charger EV, you have to fig deep for another $5,000 to get it – because in order to get it, you have to buy a bundled package that is the only way to get it.
This is very common – this “bundling,” I mean. An individual feature you want – such as a sunroof or a better stereo – is bundled with a package that costs thousands to get the one thing you wanted that, by itself, might cost a few hundred.
If you’ve been new car shopping recently, you have probably discovered why most of the new/late model vehicles on the road are white, silver and other drab colors. They charge extra for colors such as red and yellow – and the charge isn’t small. It is typically around $600 – and that explains why most of the new/late model vehicles you see are painted white or silver or some other drab, Soviet-like color.
We are being Sovietized, you see.
Some new EVs do not include a home-charge cord. The VW ID Buzz I test drove last year, for instance. It arrived without the $700 optional home-charge cord, which is something like being expected to pay extra for a fuel-filler door that opens in a vehicle with a gas tank. VW is not the only EV seller that does this, either. I was sent an Acura EV that likewise lacked the extra-cost home-charge cord. 
Tesla is infamous – rightly so – for oilily requiring Tesla “owners” (a silly term given the realities) to pay a subscription to be able to continue using the features (such as heated seats and self-driving) they assumed they’d paid for. BMW does the same. There is even a “store” in some of their cars. It is embedded in the LCD touchscreen. You tap to find the “services” you’d like and the system is conveniently tied in to your credit/debit card to deduct the cost.
Who could have imagined that – one not-so-fine day – a new car would be a kind of rolling cash register? One that also cashes in on you, by “monetizing” the “data” it collects about you and selling it off to various parties. You don’t even get a rebate coupon in return. What you do get is personalized/targeted peddling – based on the “data” that was “monetized.” 
It is all part of what is styled – accurately – as the extractive economy that replaced the productive marketplace that once existed. The latter was never perfect, to be sure. But it was at least generally predicated on the concept of value-for-value. If you did productive work, you were compensated such that you could afford to buy the things you needed plus some things you just wanted. Working and middle income people (class is a Marxist term that implies people are stuck in the class they were born into) who worked could afford to buy things such as new cars and were routinely able to own them after just three or maybe four years of making payments. It was not uncommon for some to buy them outright. This as possible when a new car cost less than $15,000 – which was not in the Mad Men era. In the Mad Men era – the early-mid 1960s – you could have bought a new car for $2,000. The era of the $15,000 new car was only about three presidents ago. 
Today, the least expensive new cars cost well over $20,000 and there are only a small handful of them left.
If you manage to buy one, the extractive economy is not done with you. It is just beginning. The insurance mafia will extract proportionately outrageous money from you, because it can force you (effectively) to pay whatever is demanded. If you live in a state that taxes personal property (thereby assaulting the very idea of “property”) you’ll pay a disproportionate sum every year as the extractive price of being allowed to possess the vehicle.
Armed government workers – the so-called “police” – are constantly extracting money from us via a litany of “offenses” that are essentially impossible to avoid being “guilty” of every time one goes for a drive. It’s just a question of time until it is any given driver’s turn to be extracted.
And now we’re being extracted at the pump, such that the day is not far off when many of us will be extracted right out of the driver’s seat.
Soon, they’ll probably start charging extra for one of those, too.
. . .
If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.
We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!
Our donate button is here.
If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is:
EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
PS: Get an EPautos magnet or sticker or coaster in return for a $25 or more one-time donation or a $10 or more monthly recurring donation. (Please be sure to tell us you want a magnet or sticker or coaster – and also, provide an address, so we know where to mail the thing!)
If you’d like a Baaaaa hat or other EPautos gear, see here!
At the current rate on monetary expansion, your pay will never keep up with the ever increasing cost of food, transportation, housing, medical, or energy.
We are being nibbled away until we are all below the poverty line and qualify for welfare. Though between now and then, we will slowly be able to afford less each year.
This works out good considering there are less workers than there were a few years ago. That way, if we can’t afford to retire, we will all fill the gap until big gov-biz imports enough immigrant workers who have no problem living in 3rd world conditions.
Shrinkflation:
https://rumble.com/v79ddv0-shrinkflation-is-getting-ridiculous.html?mref=1htl22&mrefc=2
Fuck these assholes. There needs to be a mass boycott of everything.
I dont think this will last much longer- At least in Europe the chinese will sort this out. While here we are still getting to pay for options like USB ports – the Chinese have stuff like self tinting sunroofs as standard on a car a fraction of the price !! I dont know how legacy western car makers will survive! We already have a “Temu range rover” out here (the Jaecoo 8) – in its top spec costs a third of the Range and honestly doesnt look too bad..
Another recent scam is Apple. An iPhone doesn’t come with a power cord anymore. It’s now a separate purchase. And no Apple accessory is less than 50 bucks no matter how “minor” it is. Sure you can get a third party one, but yeah, Apple doesn’t make that easy either. Gimps it in some way or voids what little warranty the phone has.
Is the iPhone cheaper? NOPE! They do not pass on the savings.
Maybe no power cord isn’t such a bad idea. You have the one from your last iPhone right? Yes…..
But thanks to the EU, your old cord doesn’t work (Apple had their own system). They banned the one Apple was using so only the usb ones work on new iPhones. Apple was too lazy to just change the Euro iPhone so now your old cords are garbage.
The irony, the EU claimed it would reduce electronic waste. It does not.
So a foreign government helps a huge company bleed you a bit more.
I’ve always struggled to understand why so many people continue to willingly remain in the Apple walled garden, AND pay extra for the privilege.
It’s been a loooong time since Apple innovated anything. They’ve copied numerous features in the iPhone from Android, and unlike Android, there are no ‘cheap’ iPhones, nor can one ‘de-Apple’ it, like one can ‘de-Google’ the Android.
Same with the desktop PC.
Why pay a substantial extra for something that isn’t even of any outstanding quality any longer, when you can either buy, or better still, build your own PC and load Linux on it?
No tracking, no ads, no license fees. And it will not regularly obsolete your hardware, unlike Microsoft and Apple.
Yet the vast majority stick with the commercial, closed source brands.
Just like they willingly wore ‘the masks’ and continue to ‘get vaccinated’ with synthetic clot shots, that modify the very cells of their bodies.
Didn’t Tim Cook give China all the back door codes and keys to his Apple products after shipping his company over there? I seem to remember reading an article of D.C. scrambling to get out of Apple computers and find an alternative. So…get tracked, stacked, and whacked via Apple (China) computers and devices, or via Android (Google based, which is NSA, I believe?). Anymore, one has to decide what devil they can dance with, and without getting burned in the process. Devil you know, or devil you don’t know… Pick one, as the 4th Amendment and anything else relating to it, died long ago, and no one noticed when it would have made a difference.
Google has internalized Android 16, which makes custom ROMs and fully de-Googling more difficult with the abandoning of AOSP. They say it’ll still be open source but what that really means is anyone’s guess.
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-android-development-aosp-3538503/
As long as you don’t use iCloud the iOS ecosystem is actually more secure and private than Android.
We’ll see how the Motorola/GrapheneOS thing shakes out this year, maybe that’ll be an option again if you want to move beyond Android 15.
You can install Lineage OS with Android 16 on a number of devices.
Combined with MicroG, there’s no need for anything Google.
And yes, Google IS slowly tightening the screws – see their pending new restrictions on sideloading apps from outside Google Play.
But there are still many more options to bypass that than with iOS. There, you need to wait for a jailbreak, and have your modifications wiped every time there’s a mandatory version update.
Regarding what’s safer, I’d say that has much more to do with user habits than what they use for a device. According to some researchers, Graphene OS is safer that unmodified iOS, but who knows – most exploits/fraud these days happen via social engineering.
Oh, and Linux has it’s share of problems. The XZ near meltdown a year or so ago comes immediately to mind. That was a Microsoft software engineer who found it and probably saved the whole Linux installed base. If you’re not familiar read about CVE-2024-3094 and Jia Tan.
https://systemweakness.com/the-xz-backdoor-cve-2024-3094-how-a-supply-chain-attack-nearly-compromised-every-linux-server-fae44fe73a21
Sure, but AFAIK that particular exploit would actually have only worked on certain configurations – namely those based on Debian with its specific version/configuration of systemd.
Many large servers run FreeBSD, and that definitely would not have been affected.
Still a problem, sure. No software is 100% ‘safe’.
The large variety of Linux distros, each with their own peculiarities and configurations, is a strength – as opposed to Windows, where one exploit will usually work on any unpatched machine running the targeted version of the OS.
Note also that the xz backdoor was discovered so quickly thanks to its being open sourced software.
With closed source, who knows how long any such backdoors can operate for, until they are found.
There are still disclosed Windows vulnerabilities that have been open for years and Microsoft apparently hasn’t got around to fixing them yet.
I am sorry, but “EV”, “Cross-Over”, and “Mustang” do NOT belong in the same sentence, let alone the same vehicle. Also, how convenient to have your credit card number stored in the touch screen option somewhere. Makes it nice if someone rips your car off. They can rip off your identity, or at least that credit card, while they are at it. Aaah, this reminds me of Wilson Picket’s song “Mustang Sally”….. a 1965. It is truly lamentable as to how far down the crap hole vehicles have sunken too. And just for grins, here is the song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16u6w0cjjrU&list=RD16u6w0cjjrU&start_radio=1
The process that resulted in a 500 dollar charge to open a frunk is absolutely insane.
But here it is.
I hope a third party system develops to get those things open for less. Or at least a video showing how to open it yourself.
“I hope a third party system develops to get those things open for less. Or at least a video showing how to open it yourself.”
Opening it probably isn’t all that hard.
The problem however will be to stop the car from being remotely bricked, once it’s reported back to the mother ship that an ‘unauthorized modification’ has been made.
More and more of the ‘modern’ vehicles will only operate for a limited time should they not be able to contact the ‘home’ servers. After that, they’ll just stop – like the guy who bought the partially disassembled old Tesla found out, when he wanted to try and charge it.
It wouldn’t charge without first connecting to the home base. And once it did so, it bricked, because it had been ‘modified’ outside of an authorized service center.
Welcome to the future, comrades!
Frunk, haha, hilarious.
Front trunk or, fu*#ing trunk, could go either way. At least there’s lots of room to keep large quantities of ceviche for the parking lot party on sports ball Saturday. Could also be a great place to ice down your snapper and flounder on the drive home from the gulf.
> large quantities of ceviche
Or peyote. 🙂
Hi Eric,
This “package” business drives me nuts! I’ve been looking around to buy one last new car that will be reliable for my wife after I check out of this life. Based on your review I decided that the Mazda 3 would be perfect – no CVT, no ASS, etc. None of the dealers around here have the basic model; the only option we want are heated seats, but to get them you have to step up to the Premier model, which also includes a sunroof which I definitely do not want – only going to leak after a few winters worth of ice and snow on it.
In the age of the internet anyone should be able to go to a car manufacturer’s website and order the exact model, color, options that they want without being forced into paying for a bunch of other crap they don’t want. Too bad the dealership cartel won’t allow that.
With computers it wouldn’t even be that hard for car makers to offer à la carte. You had more options when they had to use a piece of paper to process the order. It’s so lame.
Though if they did, in today’s “business” climate, the à la carte prices would probably be insanely overpriced and few would do it.
“ should be able to go to a car manufacturer’s website and order the exact model, color, options that they want without being forced into paying for a bunch of other crap they don’t want. Too bad the dealership cartel won’t allow that. ”
Has nothing to do with the dealership cartel.
Yet another example of people in this country that know nothing about manufacturing a product thinking they know it all.
Welcome to Murica’. Dunning Kruger effect rears its ugly head again.
Tesla is doing its part to make EeeVees more affordable:
‘Tesla booked more than $570 million last year from transactions with Musk-controlled companies, according to Insider. That included roughly $430 million from selling Megapack battery systems to xAI and another $143 million — primarily [Cybertruck] vehicle sales — to SpaceX.
‘Tesla disclosed last week that Elon Musk’s total 2025 compensation was valued at roughly $158 billion, based on the maximum fair value of stock options tied to his newly approved pay package. It’s nearly 40 times Tesla’s annual net income and roughly 1.5 times the company’s total revenue for the year.’
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/tesla-made-573-million-selling-musks-other-companies-last-year
Paying Tesla’s CEO 1.5 times sales obviously is not sustainable. Existing stockholders are being looted via massive dilution when Elon exercises his options. Then there’s insider dealing with his other companies.
Ever played three-card monte on a seedy street corner? Now you can do it on Wall Street. And it’s ‘all legal.’ 🙂
Hi Jim,
It amazes me how Tesla’s board/shareholders always approve Eloon’s outrageous pay packages, talk about being brainwashed in a cult these people can’t drink enough kol-aid.
But but…Cathy Wood will tell you to buy, buy, buy!
Because Robotaxis, Optimus robots, datacenters in space, mega batteries and solar roofs in every home…why, TSLA is soon going to be worth more than the entire US economy!
Besides, Musk’s selling Cybertrucks to his own companies is no different than NVIDIA ‘investing’ in Open AI and Open AI then ‘buying’ NVIDIA chips!
Welcome to ‘modern capitalism’! A government-funded circle-jerk, where profits are no longer required!
I’d be ok with these optional usage fees for things like Auto Stop Start, Lane Keep Assist, Driver Monitoring, hell, even seatbelts! This would inform everyone in a clear and meaningful way, which “features” the market actually wants.
Airbags did fail back in the 1970’s. They were overpriced and most people thought they were more dangerous than not, so very few sold.
So yes, most of those “features” would not be checked off.
Everyone is “rent seeking” nowadays. I had to laugh yesterday as I was watching a sportsball game on antenna tv(free). A friend of mine called regarding the game and said that despite having cable tv plus three subscription streaming services , he was not able to see the game. I cancelled over 8 years ago and don’t miss it. If ‘they ‘ turn my antenna off, I won’t miss it.
I’m no Marxist by any means, but I do recognize that, while the Bearded One was wrong about SOME things, he was not wrong about EVERYTHING.
And what we call “capitalism” today is basically a gigantic swindle designed to rip people off — particularly people who have little or no choice. Law, courts, “education,” medicine — it is all a gigantic scam intended to enrich the “elites” who produce nothing of value.
For instance, let me relate a medical/insurance scam I recently experienced. I got routine blood work done as part of an annual physical. Nothing major — cholesterol and that kind of thing. The “insurance” swindlers sent me a statement saying that the lab had billed almost NINE HUNDRED for the blood test, but had agreed to accept SEVENTY BUCKS from the insurer — of which the insurer would pay $17. My “co-pay” was $53.
Presumably, if I had no insurance (and was thus not paying an $800+ monthly premium) the lab would have billed ME the full $900.
I’ve never seen such fuckery in all my life.
But that’s the Lee Greenwood ‘Murica you live in today.
(And it also happens to be controlled by the very same people who were running the temple-coin swindle 2,000 years ago…)
I agree, X –
Health care is an excellent example of an extractive swindle. You pay tens of thousands annually for “coverage” – and then they don’t “cover” your care when you need it
And sadly, Eric, medical bills are one reason why people have to declare banktrupcy, because they simply cannot afford a $200,000 dollar hospital bill. Someone I knew ended up with a 1 Million dollar hospital bill which the hospital wrote off, because they knew the couple would never be able to afford it.
The problem is now everyone expects “health care coverage” when it should be “insurance”. You know, that archaic idea, insurance? Meaning shared risk for large bills that would sink you financially. Nope, let’s do Medicare plans with “silver sneakers” exercise plans, meals, appointment transportation, over the counter meds compensation etc. Then when something major needs “covering” you’re denied based on a third party review you never signed up for.
My wife is in chronic pain due to misaligned vertebrae impacting a nerve, drugs and injections will not help. (Lifetime scoliosis issue) Nope, spine needs a few more degrees of misalignment before Captain Third Party blesses your surgery fix. Hey you can get a Silver Sneakers exercise program rockin’ for free though!
It was bad enough before fedgov’s Affordable [sic] Care Act, and now it’s much worse.
When our twins (two twins as we say in the South) were born premature thirty years ago, the hospital bill for the least one’s first day in intensive care was $20,000. After insurance review the bill was reduced to $1,600.
About ten years ago when our old black-and-tan coonhound got another ear infection, I told the vet the antibiotic cream he used the last time really knocked it out, so let’s use the same thing this time. Vet said he couldn’t use that medicine anymore because it’s also used for humans and since Obamacare the price went up from ~$50 to ~$5,000!
I’m self-employed, and for several years we went without medical insurance because Obamacare had made it too costly. But last year we signed up because my wife was looking at possible surgery. When last month fedgov involuntarily enrolled me in its Medicare program, I dropped off the Obamacare policy. With only my wife remaining on the policy, the monthly premium increased over 3x! Three times as much for half the number of insured people!
Reminds me of that not-really-funny IRS Form 1040 simplified down to just two lines:
1) How much money did you make this year?
2) Send it to us.
Morning, Strait –
Yup. I am “uninsured” – because I’m not paying for “coverage” that will bankrupt me and won’t “cover” anything besides. So I just live and hope that sickness won’t bankrupt me. When my time comes, it comes. I will not be bled white by the white coat mafia.
A ‘health care’ system in which some
victimscustomers pay 20 times more for the same procedure as others do is flagrantly, unapologetically corrupt.This ‘health care’ cartel enjoys an unwritten exemption from antitrust law, which forbids such outrageous price gouging, price discrimination, and conspiratorial concealment of pricing strategies designed to mulct everyone but insiders.
So-called ‘health care’ that costs as least twice as much per capita as any other nation, yet produces a US life expectancy that’s shorter than some middle-income countries, is another reason why the crooked American empire is on its death bed.
Let it bleed.
>customers pay 20 times more for the same procedure as others do is flagrantly, unapologetically corrupt.
Yep.
Howzabout $11,700 for standard blood tests which cost no more that $600 at Quest or Labcorp, if that.
This, folks, is criminal.
Hospitals are evil.
I remember when the company that made Epi Pens was taken over by someone else. The CEO Heather Bresch, Mylan, immediately jacked up the price of the Epi pens from $50 dollars to $320 dollars. She also got a 671% pay raise, as well. Who says crime does not pay?
When you self-insure you don’t bother with “routine blood work” to check for phony baloney “cholesterol” readings. So you’d never need to experience that Kafka-esque payment circle jerk nor contemplate support for the teachings of the “bearded one.”
FDS,
This is a good point. Were I a doctor in the current system, I would have a huge concern about the effect of AI on my future employment prospects…..modern patient/doctor relationships work under a model of what I call algorithmic medical practice. You walk in for say a yearly physical and they give you a standard set of tests…..match up with the chart that tells you what overpriced pharmaceuticals to demand that you take and out the door. For a lot of people, the Covid hoax was the final straw….for general medicine this system is totally broken, for surgical procedures and emergency medicine it still has value. The bottom line is take active responsibility for your health because the medical/pharmaceutical industrial complex is generally incompetent.
As someone who has self ensured for the majority of my adult life, I now do routine blood work. Once a year, the cost is 4-5 hundred bucks through life extension for a comprehensive male panel. Since it is my only brush with the medical system, it’s not unreasonable. Had to educate myself the last few years with all the items involved on the test. And, if something is a bit high or low, how to correct on my own using any natural methods. Last thing I want to do is go to some quack doctor. A broken bone or GSW, fine, they got me. Otherwise I’m willing to give my pills and orange goo to someone more in need than me.
You’re trusting an awful lot with those “tests” to not play along with the so-called “corrections.” After the past 6 years, I no longer have that level of trust. You seem to want to hedge. To each his own I guess.
Everything that still falls into the reference interval I don’t worry much about. Even if a little high, little low. I have 4 years of baseline tests to compare now. Vitamin D came in just under the minimum last test in January. Not too worried about that as I quit taking supplements six months before that test. I take zinc, turmeric, and vitamin C and thats about it. Cant stomach the idea of swallowing handfuls of pills everyday for the rest of my life. I’ll go back to the liquid vitamin D next fall. If something gets way out of the bounds I’ll go to my naturopath, first, then if she cant solve it, maybe I’ll take my tests to the VA for a second opinion. At this point I’ve lived such a wonderful life not much left for me here outside the fam, or seeing the garbage elite getting their balls kicked all the way up into their throat, Fat chance on that, but, the world does sometimes turn on a trifle..
Unlike a “normal” business, the Medical Industrial Complex on an entirely different model.
A normal business looks at their raw materials costs, labor, utilities and such then establish a selling price designed to cover those costs and return a profit. Virtually none of those factors are involved in what the MedComplex charges.
Thirty years ago in North Carolina the average charge for a lumpectomy was ~$1600. The local hospital 20 miles from Charlotte was charging over $4000. No reason, just because they could.
Throw in Certificate of Need Laws and you get a protection racket in favor of the whole medical establishment.
Corruption doesn’t begin to describe it.
Yes, the “healthcare” grift is infuriating indeed.
For those interested, here’s a study published with the NIH regarding treatment of colon cancer in mice with a bacterium, Ewingella americana, which appears to have been wildly effective at eradicating the cancer: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12710904/
Of course, this study has been suppressed by the Big Pharma-owned media.
Marx recognized lot of the problems with “capitalism” (as practiced) but his “solution” was never workable and in the end guaranteed to be even worse. Back in the 80s when the Cold War was still on being familiar with his ideas was considered necessary for any educated person so it was felt necessary to throw the common people a few bones. Now the Epstein Class feels that they don’t even need to pretend to care, hence the revival of sympathy for Marxism.
Hi Eric, et al,
Having read a bit of Marx and Thomas Sowell’s excellent book on Marxism (Sowell was a deeply read Marxist at one point), I can tell you that what we have in this country is nothing like what I would deem capitalism…..the correct label is cronyism. And it was cooked into the books almost from the beginning of the republic. The two opposing schools of thought-Jeffersonianism (The political doctrines advocated by Thomas Jefferson, based upon the greatest possible individual and local freedom, and corresponding restriction of the powers of national government) and Hamiltonianism (political and economic principles associated with Alexander Hamilton, centered on a strong central government, a broad interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, and active federal promotion of industrial and commercial development. )
IMO, liberty died in this country most finally with the so called civil war, which like all wars was primarily about money and power, not slavery. As a result, eventually, we end up with a large, inefficient and doomed system run by parties who have ownership over the structure and function of government but who are not elected by anybody. Thus, for example, the MIC gets largess at the expense of the taxpayer to produce non-functional over priced junk….they get away with it, temporarily, because they do not have to compete on merit, which is a foundational principle of what I’d call capitalism. The market will eventually right this wrong but until the demands of real customers are considered, I’d not call this capitalism. Reading Marx, or even about Marx is a chore. His prose is turgid and boring and his concepts are really fucking stupid. To me it speaks volumes about the people who declare themselves to be Marxists…..and to be fair, people who use Marxist as a pejorative term as well. Of course, there were tons of German philosophers who fit the same mold so…
I don’t know who the gretest president was, but clearly the greatest vice president was Aaron Burr
Amen, Horst!
If. only he’d taken care of that “bastard son of a Scotch peddler” sooner.
Interesting. These volumes that Marx’s turgid, boring prose and stupid concepts speak of those who use Marxist as a pejorative term — just what is in them? What say these volumes about these people? About me when I call a devotee of Marxism a Marxist?
“And what we call “capitalism” today is basically a gigantic swindle designed to rip people off — particularly people who have little or no choice. Law, courts, “education,” medicine — it is all a gigantic scam intended to enrich the “elites” who produce nothing of value.”
Correct – but the answer to that is not socialism, marxism or fascism. Which are all birds of a feather anyway.
Monopolies and scams of this order are only possible thanks to government enablement; via its licensing, regulations and constant meddling in the free market.
You don’t like the problems they’ve caused? — Just wait for their solutions!
The medical mafia can only get away with it thanks to complicit politicians. Trump promised before his first run that if elected, he would enforce long-standing anti-collusion and anti-trust provisions that are being openly and brazenly violated on a daily basis.
Of course, that promise disappeared as soon the election results were announced.
Just like pharma and plenty of other megacorps, the broader medical industry has on its side the best politicians money can buy. That is not ‘capitalism’.
Maybe it’s time to boycott any manufacturer that plays that sort of game.
We are ruled by psychopaths and sociopaths who see the general populace as subhuman things to be controlled. It reminds me of what V’ger on Star Trek the Motion Picture called humans: carbon units. And like that intelligence, they seek our elimination or at least reduction. It seems like to me that they try to discourage family formation through various policies, such as confiscatory taxes, currency manipulation, encouragement of sexual perversion and pharmaceuticals such as the “safe and effective vaccines.”
In a word, it is pure evil