The Reality-Based Community: It’s not just fossil fuels
Let’s play a kids’ riddle game. My short-term benefits on first use are positive, and can be obtained at very low up-front cost. In your social circle, I indicate coolness and status. Once you use me, you find that the (again, short-term) benefits of using are increasingly greater than not using, even if you start to wish you had never started in the first place. After an extended period, the deferred costs begin to come due, but they are due whether or not you keep seizing the short-term “bargain”. What am I?
(Via gristmill)