Once upon a time there was a boy who wanted very much to see the world. He worked every day to afford a computer and one special day he discovered he’d made enough to buy one. The man at the store offered him several different models of computer, each prettier and with more buttons and sparkles than the next. The boy was smart and he didn’t have terribly much money, so he bought the computer that he could afford, passing on all the higher end models. This made the man angry, because he was a very bad man indeed and wanted all of the boys money.
The boy went home and tried to do things on his computer, but there were not very many things to do. He wanted to play games, but there weren’t any. The man had games, but he wanted more money for them. The boy heard there were games in this magical place called the internet, but he didn’t have the internet. The man sold the internet too. It cost a lot of money and you had to pay for it over and over again—every month. Everything the boy wanted seemed to be controlled by the man and seemed to demand that the boy find and deliver more and more money.
This made the boy sad. This made the boy want to stop wanting things, but he couldn’t. So the boy worked harder and gave more and more money to the man in order to get all the nice the nice things he wanted for his computer.
This, sadly is more reality than fairy tale. The boy and the man dance around these issues every day and the boy never ever truly wins. The man always gets his money.