We Used to Be the Shoppers
Now, We’re the Products.
The shelves were supposed to serve us.
Now we sit on them—priced, packaged, and waiting to be picked.
The healthcare system shops for us.
The insurance industry shops for us.
The food suppliers shop for us.
They scan our data, weigh our value, and decide which version of us delivers the best return.
We’re all sealed in our own plastic bags—branded for convenience, drained of air, and quietly priced to move.
🏭 1 The Aisle of Human Inventory
Every pillar of modern life treats people like merchandise.
- Healthcare doesn’t heal; it harvests. Every test, every prescription, represents another SKU.
- Insurance doesn’t protect; it speculates. You’re a risk portfolio, not a person.
- Food doesn’t nourish; it sedates. Plastic-wrapped addiction labeled “value.”
We’re not pushing the carts anymore—we’re in them.
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💰 2 Who Owns the Cart
The cart belongs to corporations.
They roll it through our lives, plucking what’s ripe for profit and leaving the rest to expire.
Your illness is inventory.
Your debt is a product line.
Your hunger is a marketing metric.
They don’t feed you—they feed off you.
🧠 3 The Packaging Process
The system vacuum-seals people for predictability.
Education forms the mold.
Employment applies the label.
Advertising shrink-wraps the self until the barcode feels like identity.
Freedom terrifies a market built on forecasts, so they package us in comfort and call it stability.
🥫 4 Food as a Mirror of Control
The plastic-wrapped loaf and the single-serve salad represent the same idea:
keep the food obedient; keep the people obedient.
The more processed the food, the more docile the eater.
The more processed the citizen, the easier to manage.
Buying bread from a local baker isn’t nostalgia — it’s economic sabotage against the grocery gods.
🩺 5 The Healthcare Harvest
Hospitals resemble temples but function as supermarkets.
Treatments line the aisles: emergency, premium, generic, expired.
Prevention isn’t profitable; illness is.
Insurance firms bargain-hunt our risk, denying coverage the way bargain shoppers ditch bruised fruit.
They always pick the cheapest bag — because replacing people costs less than reforming the system.
🧍 6 The Illusion of Choice
Fifty brands of cereal, hundreds of health plans, thousands of streaming channels — all owned by the same few conglomerates.
Choice without power is theater.
It keeps us comparing labels so we never notice the store is locked from the outside.
🔥 7 Breaking the Seal
We don’t need perfection; we need punctures.
Every hole we tear in the plastic lets a little air in:
- Cook something real.
- Pay a farmer instead of a logo.
- Question why premiums rise when profits do.
- Remember neighbors’ names, not passwords.
Air ruins shelf life. That’s the point.
🌬️ 8 When We Start Breathing Again
Once enough people open their own bags, the market loses control.
Connection has no SKU.
Empathy can’t be scanned.
They sell convenience because oxygen terrifies them — it spoils the product.
🪙 9 The Exit
Policy won’t save us; policy is written by the shoppers.
The rebellion starts in the cart:
- Buy from humans, not corporations.
- Repair, reuse, grow, share.
- Feed someone instead of a stock price.
Walk off the shelf. Tear the plastic. Step into the air.
Because the moment we stop letting them shop for us, we start living for real.
🧾 Author Note
Part of the Proud Have-Not / Plastic Protest series—writing for anyone tired of being shelf-stable in a system that sells our silence by the ounce.
