As I had explained while seeking help a while back, my car stereo plays only tapes. So my response to that was to find out where tapes are available. So i go and raid Planet M and Calypso (thanks,
![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
) and Odyssey. And spend fifteen hundred rupees to get a handsome collection of eleven tapes.
Now, some people are replying to that post suggesting I upgrade my car stereo system. One doubt to that, however, is what do i do with my tapes! The only reason I bought all of them were for my car! As for my music in other places, I prefer the pirated MP3 format. Reason being, except for a couple of albums like the wall or DSOTM, I don’t want the song to play in deterministic order! I want the excitement of trying to guess which the next song will be, and hoping it’s something i really really like. And I like to suddenly switch to some other song, either in the same album or otherwise. All very infeasible with tapes.
Hence, the solution is that in order to preserve my tapes, I need to keep the old car stereo system!
Don’t you see an analogy between this and say our PSUs? They had outdated machinery, so to make do they recruited huge numbers. They recruited and recruited, so as to make the old machines work. And soon faced the same problem I’m going to face soon. Even if i replace my stereo, what do I do with my tapes? Even if I get new machinery, what will I do with all the extra people?
And before I forget to mention, people are much more difficult than tapes. If not anything, they are harder to discard. Even if you decide that you won’t use them, you need to pay them. And if you are a PSU, you need to pay them all their lives. And even after that (there is something called family pension). And if you put a foot wrong, they can go on strike. And shut your factory. And maybe even burn you.
Hence, the solution is that in order to preserve myself from being burnt, I need to keep the old machinery!
Is there a solution to all this? Is there a way someone divine can provide some incentive for people to make large-scale long-term decisions against short-term ones? I’m wondering.
As for me, I’m not changing the stereo in the near future. At max, I’ll be buying the cassette adapter that some people have mentioned, and continue to use my tapes. Thankfully I’m saved, since the expenditure on tapes is now a sunk cost. What will happen to the PSUs???