An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
In the early noughties I’d fly over from London to Chicago for periodic business trips and, burdened with jet lag during the the first week of any stay, would flick through my hotel room cable TV options at sparrow fart o’clock. I would alway stumble upon Chuck Norris & Christie Brinkley, and the local ambulance chasing lawyers (whom I dislike enough not to even name by person here in this article). The commercials would always stack in such a way as to form connections in my mind:
- commercials for chemical water purifiers would be followed by those for dry skin moisturizers
- property investment seminars were followed by debt relief support mechanisms
- an abundance of food preparation and consumption adverts were followed by a multitude of home fitness options
It almost seemed a requirement that every business selling a benefit must give rise to a problem, which had to be solved by a different business. My cynical and less than objective assessment of life in the U.S. was that capitalism would wither in a culture that prioritized prevention over cure. It was a notion reinforced by one of my U.S. managers at the time who would pop Tylenol like it was candy rather than dealing with their underlying ailment.
