This is a fact of life. Nobody has your best interest but you. Forget about all the "crap" you have been learning since you can remember.

For instance, our society and system works like this :

• Someone comes up with a product idea
• Some Marketing guru finds a reason why you should buy.
• They bombard you with advertising to convince you your life will be better if you buy XYZ
• You buy it, but your life is only marginally better.

Most of the jobs in the developed world revolve around this concept (directly or indirectly). Once a French friend pointed out to me that on TV he saw an ad about buying a car with no money down, and the next ad was how to get out of debt. Only foreigners can see the irony of our society.

But the good news, is that this is your power. You have the control to change things, to decide for yourself whether you really want to fall for it.

Take us, guys. If you pay close attention, most of the advertising is about buying a product that will get us an amazing girl. I mean it makes sense since one of our goal in this life is to procreate and keep the human specie alive.

Another example is eating out. The goal if eating is have to optimal nutrients for survival. However, when you eat out, the short-term goal of anyone serving you food is to maximize his/her profits. An easy way to do this is to use as much sugar, oil/fat and salt as possible. As any FIRE adept, you should quickly learn that eating out is a lose-lose proposition. And especially people who pretend they are not good at cooking (or have no interest in cooking). Even if you can survive today without cooking, there is a huge cost. If you spend 20$ per day buying food (and these days 20$ is either very unhealthly or cheap), this adds up to more than 200000$ over 30 years.