Representative image of a subscription box.
Credit: iStock Photo
Umesh M V
Life on subscription mode
The concept of the subscription business model revolves around customers paying a regular, recurring fee to access a product or service. The subscription business is not a new concept. Our good-old neighbourhood book and movie lending libraries are a good example.
As digital technologies have made it easier to pay for and access products, subscription services now encompass a wider range of products and experiences, including music, movies, games, learning courses, newspapers, magazines, water, fitness, clothing, groceries, pet food, meals, wines, and cars.
Subscriptions have become an integral part of our daily lives and give customers the feeling of owning a bunch of things without the hefty price tag, the hassle, or the mess of actually buying them.
That got me thinking: in the future, not very far, may be 10-15 years, what if LIFE itself gets into subscription mode? Instead of a lifetime subscription, you will subscribe to a life “time” subscription. It would not be far-fetched to imagine some life-science company that ensures you are alive as long as your subscription’s valid. We could probably choose from various subscription levels: base level, all organs working at suboptimal levels; “Silver,” all organs working at optimal levels; “Gold,” where all organs are working at semi-strong levels; and “Platinum,” where even the pleasure apparatus is at the highest level of performance.
If you fail to pay your subscription on time, your life will be suspended, and on continuous default, life itself will be terminated.
You could be lured into subscriptions by attractively pricing them during the initial years to make them so “addictive” that you will be forced to subscribe even if the subscription subsequently increases by 100% every year (a la Amazon Prime). A family subscription would not be very far from “life” for the entire family.
You could be bullied into subscriptions like YouTube or Spotify, where you are bombarded with advertisements until you opt for their ad-free subscription. You could be infected with a virus (a la Covid), where you would have a cold or diarrhoea intermittently (like their ads), and you will be relieved from this misery only if you subscribe to “life.”
What if Covid itself was proof-of-concept testing, with the vaccine doses acting as our ongoing subscription payments?
If people live perpetually, what will happen to “life” insurance companies? They would not be far behind to announce their own schemes. Probably they will have an accident policy that will include “repair or replace” of organs. While OEM parts might not be available, you could always choose from a wide variety of “engineered“ options.
India could still be the offshore centre of the world. A life sciences company in Hyderabad or Bengaluru will probably come out with a generic version at one-tenth the cost and export it back to the US.
Signing off.. Life is online. Subscribe to everything; you own nothing.