A Boring Dystopia

To be clear, there's no indication in this article that the family couldn't afford this. It sounds like they've got great family support. It also sounds like this was an activity this 7 year old took up completely independently, not because someone was like "oh no, we can't afford a tombstone." The article reads like this 7 year old is using this activity as a really positive way to cope with the loss of her mother, and then their supportive community picked up on it and ran with it.

Orphan crushing machine

Excellently stated - you're so right. For any others who might wonder, as I did previously:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/orphan-crushing-machine

It's a tool of the rich who control the media.

Glad you already posted my thoughts exactly. What a terrible timeline we live in.

Individually, in a way that in no way stops other tragedies. Yeah.

Posadism's looking real good about now.

Well she is white. They only do that to the black ones. Still pissed at the Karen who did that and for the cops for actually answering the fucking call.

So much of the community was there – police officers, a motorcycle group, judges, EMS workers, nurses – to show their support. Numerous businesses – the list is long, and it keeps growing – brought checks or pledged money to help. Others have donated clothes for Emouree and brought food.

@Fredselfish is right about race being the reason.

I was a funeral director for 9 years but recently left the industry. I didn't feel like I was helping anymore. All of the 5 funeral homes in my town are now owned by 2 corporations. Courts have ruled a corporation cannot buy out all the funeral homes in one town, so these corporations work together to divide up towns.

The main concern of corporations are things like low accounts receivables, high insurance sales, high sales of packages, and corporate stock price. Our offices had TVs that displayed these stats on a loop and ranked corpoate owned funeral homes as well as their individual staff based on these numbers. Staff with subpar numbers would be given "coachings" and "retraining". I got a lot of those. I was coached not to "fall for sad stories" and how to judge what a person can afford by looking at the car they drove, what they were wearing, and slyly asking what they do for work.

Some of the coaching were beyond shady and straight up illegal. Local regulations required that we show our least expensive option to all clients. My bosses would instruct me to hide those options unless it was obvious the client couldn't afford anything else. Local regulations prevented me from making untrue statements. I was told to present our premium package that 15% of people purchased as "our most popular package". It was not. The cheap package was our most popular package, but also, most clients did not purchase a package as it was less expensive to just buy the things they wanted individually.

When I brought up that clients were unhappy, bosses would regularly tell me "So what? Are they going to go to X Funeral Home? Cause we own that one too." The entire focus was making the KPI numbers go up. I get that this is how corporations operate, but we were selling funerals not cars. It just didn't feel right.

My advice is to determine how important funeral services are to you. The modern day funeral is an idea crafted by funeral homes to make money. If you really like the idea, be prepared to pay for it, but don't feel like you have to. There's nothing wrong with organizing a small service on your own with you and close family. There's nothing wrong with not having a tombstone. Determine how important it is to you and don't let others pressure you into spending money on something you don't value.

FYI, cremation can still be expensive. If you are serious about spending the least amount of money possible, consider telling your family you'd like to be donated to science. But, do be aware, there can be some controversial things under the umbrella of "donated for science", and they'd have no control over what.

This is my take however I would be ok with my body being used for organ donation and medical research. Apart from that I don't plan on hording any reelestate in my death.

I told my wife I'd be OK with anything up to and including the body farm but it's her call. She seems to be OK with donation to science but body farm is a step too far. I'm cool with that.

My grandmother recently died and she prearranged everything, from where the service would be, to the coffin, to the plot and headstone.

I dread at what the cost would be if we had ti pay out of pocket for all of this. She had an open casket, will be buried with her husband, and so on.

It is a racket, with my dad we had him cremated and aservice and I think it was about 3k if memory serves.