shopping around

It is one of those oddities or our current system; At its heart it has a lie about freedom, to which the lie we tell children about Santa Claus is nothing.
And yet these lies are so very subtle.
Take the idea of shopping around.
This is one of those myths - so beautiful as it is impossible.
It imposes upon humanity a task or mission: One must fight, and fight hard not to be ripped off.
Buying anything and everything becomes (potentially) at least is a semi-epic battle, and we all find our place in this war.
There are of course the shopping around heros, who have the time and the mind set to fight and fight again to find the best of bargains. To these 'god like' individuals the world belongs as truly as it belonged to Achilles or Alexander.
The trouble of course is the rest of us as just foot soldiers in this war - the equivalent of the poor souls who the heros of Homer had to whip into war.
And of course whipped we will be (and blamed for our wretchedness), by the system and the laughter of the shopping heros.
Of course one might claim our system was all about freedom while ancient Greece was about coercion.; and yet of course those Heros were free then and now, and the others? us foot soldiers, peasant and grunts? Are they really free born folk, or are they caught in a system not of their own choosing, a system that serves only to blame them for what they cannot be?
Or again we will no doubt claim that at least our system does not kill anyone - our heroism is peaceful:well save if you are an indigenous society or a dweller in shanty town or an orangutan or....
oh well...,.
I am (really) sure we must be better somehow....