Fee-based society...

It has been wondrous to see how we have become addicted to fees for all manners of services which we use, pay for, and administer. Take a few examples; we pay fees, and often more of these days, for renting a car- concession and infrastructure-associated reconstruction fees at airports and other transportation centers. We pay fees, of course, to use turnpikes and motorways; now that private equity and bulge-banks are getting into buying up public right-of-ways, more fees to come. Airlines charge all kinds of fees; fees for security, use of gates, and even fuel.

Speaking of private equity, fees are the name in town. The management charges a fee for taking a company private, or take in investment dollars, and then charges around 20%- at least the self-respecting kinds do- as fees on any spoils earned.

Take your normal, vanilla-type bank. Fees are charged every time, one uses an out-of-network ATM, additional fees for writing checks above a certain number- all right, this may not be as a big issue these days with online banking. Fees are levied for not-sufficient-funds. In fact, some banks make around 20-25% of their profits this way- by charging you and me right and left.
Credit card companies likely invented the whole business in the first place.

In educating our kids, we have learned that there's tuition, which we expect would be used to pay for expenses, and then there are tuition fees, registration fees, and other campus fees.

Fees have become the norm, rather than being exceptions, and accordingly have developed into an instrument of more than a financial hook on society. A society which becomes addicted or forced to accept "additional expense" for service, is also a society which can be more readily manipulated and controlled.