經濟學人：無法選擇咋死，但能選擇死後咋辦

【世界決定視界】【視界決定世界】

歡迎打開「我與我們的世界」，從此，讓我們一起「縱覽世界之風雲變幻、洞察社會之脈搏律動、感受個體之生活命運、挖掘自然之點滴奧妙」。

我與我們的世界，既是一個「奮鬥」的世界，也是一個「思考」的世界。奮而不思則罔，思而不奮則殆。這個世界，你大，它就大；你小，它就小。

歡迎通過上方公眾號名稱打開公眾號「查看歷史消息」來挖掘往期文章，因為，每期都能讓你「走近」不一樣的世界、帶給你不一樣的精彩。

本期導讀：死亡，是相對於生命體存在或存活的生命現象，指維持一個生物存活的所有生物學功能的永久終止。能夠導致死亡的現象一般有：衰老、被捕食、營養不良、疾病、窒息、自殺、他殺、餓死、脫水、意外事故以及死刑（如槍斃），或者受傷等。絕大部分已知的生物都會不可避免的經歷死亡。

在人類社會中，死亡這個自然現象被宗教傳統和哲學疑問關注了幾千年。其中可能包含一種信念，即某種復活（相關於亞伯拉罕諸教）、轉世（相關於印度諸教），或者意識永久消失，被稱為「神滅」（Oblivion，通常相關於無神論）。

人類死亡之後的紀念儀式可能包括各種喪禮或葬禮。人的遺體通常被稱為屍體，一般會土葬或火化，但亦有多種其他的方法處理人的屍體。

Undertakers

殯葬業者

Death, disrupted

死事，亂了

Great news for the dead: the funeral industry is being shaken up

逝者有了好消息：殯葬業重新洗牌進行中

FEW choose how they die, but they can choose what happens next. Most leave this to loved ones who, in their distress, usually outsource the decision to an undertaker. The transaction is often a let-down, with hardly any choices beyond 「Burn or bury?」 and 「Cheque or card?」

沒人能選擇怎麼死，但人們卻能選擇死後怎麼辦，多數人都會交給最愛的人辦，而經受喪親之痛的最愛的人，一般都會外包給殯葬業者辦。辦那件事兒，經常會令人神傷，除了能在「燒了還是埋了？」、「支票支付還是刷卡支付？」之間做選擇外，別無其他選項可選。

The average American funeral with a burial costs nearly $9,000. In some countries,the exorbitant cost of staging a 「proper」 funeral can lead families to financial ruin. Nearly everywhere, the bereaved have put up with rip-off last rites because of the lack of better options. At last,technology and competition are starting to disrupt this most conservative of industries. This is good news for anyone who plans to die one day.

The funeral trade has the most basic of business advantages: inexhaustible demand. Every minute more than 100 people die somewhere. Not all pay for a funeral. Tibetans still practise sky burial, leaving bodies on mountaintops; the Cavite?o in the Philippines bury their dead in hollowed-out tree trunks. But in the rich world, dying is big business—an industry, for example, worth $16bn in 2017 in America.

Undertakers have long been able to get away with poor service. Their customers are typically distressed, under time-pressure and completely inexperienced (people in rich countries buy more cars than they do funerals). As a result, few shop around, let alone haggle. With consumers docile,providers can keep quality low and prices high—much like tourist-trap restaurants, another one-off purchase made in haste with little information. Some sellers have made matters worse with techniques ranging from opaque pricing to emotional blackmail. The asymmetry in knowledge between undertaker and grief-stricken client allows ludicrous markups on things like coffins. It also makes it easier to sell services that people do not realise are mostly unnecessary, such as embalming.

Butnow undertakers』 market power is being challenged on at least three fronts.Oneis changing customer demand. Driven in part by the decline of religion, and broader shifts in attitudes to death and dying, fewer bereaved are ready to cede their dead unthinkingly to an off-the-shelf burial. They prefer shrouds and woodland burials to coffins and graveyards; celebrations of life to sombre rituals in funeral homes; and video tributes to a life just lost to displays of the embalmed dead.

Second, more and more, they choose cremation, which is cheaper than burial, and allows a 「direct」 form in which the disposal of the body is handled without fuss, and kept separate from the commemoration of the life lost. Andthird, the internet is disrupting death as it has life. Comparison sites shed light on funeral providers』 services. And though not many bereaved relations yet 「bring their own coffin」, a quick browse online gives people a far better idea of what it should cost. Startups are offering more radical disruption: rocket-launches for ashes; QR codes on graves linked to online tributes; new ways of disposing of bodies besides burying or burning.

The nail in the coffin?

壓死駱駝的最後一根稻草？

Nobody is yet writing undertaking』s epitaph. Butthe industry will have to adapt. The first signs of a shift are already on display in America, where funeral-home revenue is projected to stagnate despite an annual death rate—the industry』s lifeblood, after all—that is expected to rise. In Britain a price war between the largest providers may at last cause prices to drop.

The most important effect of all this disruption is not just cheaper funerals and fewer debt-burdened families. It is a more profound shift in returning to consumers perhapsthe most personal of all decisions: control over their farewell.

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