The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit • Hacker News Board

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#41

Post by righthand » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 2:59 PM UTC

rkomorn wrote: post #37

righthand wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you implement subscriptions + micropayments but let all the web scrapers through that’s not a sound new attempt at a system. That’s the same leaky system with micropayments slapped on top. See?

I guess. Ancestor comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45302115 already starts with the context of not wanting to subscribe to a random site, so I don't know how we don't end back up exactly there to have a non-leaky system with micropayments on top?

But the solution to not wanting to subscribe is to pay the $0.50 or leave. Before it was: find a way around paywall or leave. The OP maybe wants free things only?

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#42

Post by rkomorn » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 3:00 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #25

ta1243 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 years ago a couple of sites I occasionally viewed used "agate", which is now called Axate. https://www.axate.com/ It worked well, I loaded it with about $3 and used it a few times. Clearly not something publishers are fans of though as it's far easier to carefully select 987 partners to sell your data to.

The reality is that most people just want stuff free. They say stuff like they whitelist, or donate (it certainly brings lots os social praise) but if you have ever been on the other side, you know that virtually nobody does this.

There's also a very real factor that we now consume from dozens if not hundreds of sources per month.

The overhead, as a consumer, of managing any of this as actual subscriptions, transactions, or membership to some (likely multiple) sort of ecosystem would be substantial, even beyond just the money aspect.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#43

Post by leoqa » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 3:03 PM UTC

I’m not particularly sympathetic to retirement home narratives that paint each person as a lonely, incompetent senior wasting away. I witnessed first hand how my mother spent her adulthood partying instead of providing and now it’s become a critical issue for our family to provide for her. Ultimately I don’t expect my children (or staff-journalist) to project pity on me for my circumstances.

I run a weekly route with MealsOnWheels and deliver food/perform wellness checks to many people whom are homebound. There are much worse fates for seniors than a community home with social programs and meal service.

I think it is everyone’s duty to buy long-term care insurance (perhaps the government should provide this, as we will all need it). I also believe you must provide for the retirement you expect.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#44

Post by stouset » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 3:05 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #24

rco8786 wrote: post #15

Pretty sure we’re all being milked for profit. Thats kinda how this whole thing works.

Retirees are more likely than not to have built up at least a small pension or 401(k)[USA]: money sitting there earning interest and capital gains. You don't think the Aging Industry is going to just sit around and not try to grab as much of it as they can? They are going to do their best to ensure the system is set up to let them harvest those accounts dry.

I would wager that’s exactly what the GP thinks.

It was pretty clear to me they think the entire system is set up so that anyone with needs is milked to extract the maximum possible amount of money.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#45

Post by gniv » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 3:05 PM UTC

prasadjoglekar wrote: post #2

I stopped when this modal popped up: UnHerd and our 877 technology partners ask you to consent to the use of cookies to store/access and process personal data on your device.

This is common but I haven't seen it so explicitly stated in the first popup.

You know how you are asked to agree to cookies even though you agreed recently on the same site? It's probably because they added a partner to the 1000 previous ones.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#46

Post by jezzamon » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 3:06 PM UTC

Retirement villages seem particularly impacted by Baumol's cost disease. Combine that with aging societies and the general neglect often given to elderly people, I'm not optimistic about us being able to provide a reasonable quality of life for our elders in the future...

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#47

Post by loudmax » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 3:06 PM UTC

parpfish wrote: post #40

i have a hard time feeling sympathetic to some of these stories. their buy-back prices dont let them reap the windfall from the wild growth of housing prices? or that they're complaining about too many "old people" in a retirement home? they need to pay 5 quid for a beer?

Beware of generalizations, especially for cohorts of millions of people.

Surely, some of these people blocked development and did everything they could to boost their personal net worth at the expense of younger generations. Other people did the reverse. Most people just went with the flow and didn't bother to vote either way.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#48

Post by rco8786 » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 3:08 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #24

rco8786 wrote: post #15

Pretty sure we’re all being milked for profit. Thats kinda how this whole thing works.

Retirees are more likely than not to have built up at least a small pension or 401(k)[USA]: money sitting there earning interest and capital gains. You don't think the Aging Industry is going to just sit around and not try to grab as much of it as they can? They are going to do their best to ensure the system is set up to let them harvest those accounts dry.

Yea again, that's not different than anyone else with any other amount of money. For profit corporations are designed from the ground up to separate us from our money (or "milk" if you will).

In reading the article, it doesn't seem to me that anyone is being taken advantage of any more than all of us are when we walk into a shopping mall, open amazon.com, or buy a home.

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#49

Post by ileonichwiesz » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 3:09 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #7

SirFatty wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just toggle the JavaScript off...

I tried this but I found a lot of vile websites these days load the actual article with JS

That precludes them from indexing the article in search engines, so thankfully it’s not as popular as it otherwise would be

Re: The sordid reality of retirement villages: Residents are being milked for profit

#50

Post by rco8786 » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 3:10 PM UTC

stouset wrote: post #44

ryandrake wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retirees are more likely than not to have built up at least a small pension or 401(k)[USA]: money sitting there earning interest and capital gains. You don't think the Aging Industry is going to just sit around and not try to grab as much of it as they can? They are going to do their best to ensure the system is set up to let them harvest those accounts dry.

I would wager that’s exactly what the GP thinks. It was pretty clear to me they think the entire system is set up so that anyone with needs is milked to extract the maximum possible amount of money.

I mean that's just trivially true right? For profit corporations are designed to maximize profits, therefore they must try to maximize the amount of money they extract from their customers.