Public Life Is Now A Subscription Service
by James Corbett
corbettreport.com
September 14, 2025
Traveling to a foreign country is a bit like entering The Twilight Zone. Confronted by bizarre customs and unfamiliar routines, it can feel like everyone around you is acting strange, yet they treat you like the odd one out.
Such was my experience when I tried ordering breakfast during a recent trip to Malaysia. On the surface, this might seem like a trivial example of a foreign tourist not being used to a local custom, but that "trivial" experience revealed to me something extremely worrying about the direction civilization itself is headed.
In a nutshell, what should have been a simple breakfast order helped me understand with greater clarity than ever before that people the world over are collectively sleepwalking into a nightmare. In that nightmare, our ability to participate in public life—our very ability to exist in the world—is increasingly tied to subscription services, devices and technological infrastructure. When our ability to opt out of those services is finally taken away, we will be offered a chilling ultimatum: either adopt the very technology that is enslaving us . . . or die.
So, do you want to know how a breakfast ordeal in a foreign country can lead to such dramatic conclusions? Then read on!
Breakfast In Malaysia
As you may or may not know by now, I was recently in Malaysia reporting for Global Research on the twentieth anniversary of the Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War. If you don't know about that trip, you can watch my report on the conference (including the video of my speech) and my interview with former Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad to get up to speed.
But while I was in Malaysia, a funny thing happened: I had the hotel breakfast buffet in the morning before heading to the conference. That isn't particularly funny, I suppose, unless you find the eclectic mixture of Asian and Western breakfast foods typically offered in these buffets "funny."
The real funny part, though, was when I went to pay for my breakfast after eating. I informed the hostess I was done and got out my wallet to use some of the Malaysian ringgit I had converted when flying into the country.
She saw the cash and gave me an uncomfortable look. "Oh, it's cashless payment only."
"But I don't have a card."
After another uncomfortable look and a brief consultation with another hostess, they decided they could flag down someone from the hotel check-in desk to open the cash register and accept a cash payment.
I admit I wasn't totally shocked by this development. It brought to mind my trip to England to attend the Better Way Conference in 2023. I remember the same look of consternation (or was it condescension?) on the faces of the cashiers in various stores as they explained they were "cashless only." And I remember realizing at that time just how sheltered I am from the reality of the coming cashless society, living as I do in Japan, where cash is still (mostly) king.
But it was my second morning in Malaysia when the reality of my predicament sank in. That second morning, too, I went through the same song and dance, the same breakfast, the same attempt to pay in cash, the same look of consternation/condescension, the same "cashless only" refrain . . . but this time, there was no one at the desk to open the cash register. Apparently there was literally no way they could accept my actual physical cash as payment for their services. We had reached an impasse.
"So, I guess this one is free?" I half-joked.
With that same uncomfortable look on her face, she glanced around, hoping to locate a manager. She was clearly at a loss as to what to do. A few moments later she gave up, nodded at me, and gestured for me to go. As it turned out, the hotel's lack of infrastructure for dealing with cash meant they would literally rather let me eat for free than accept payment in those antiquated paper notes.
By my third and final day in Malaysia, I was sick of the hotel breakfast rigamarole, so I ventured outside the hotel to grab a bite at one of the many nearby cafés. One place in particular looked cozy and had a nice menu, so I went in, decided what I wanted, and waited for the waiter to come take my order. And waited a bit longer. And waited longer still. Finally, I realized the answer to my waiterless conundrum had been staring me in the face the whole time: one of those "Scan the QR code to order" signs that are (I gather) an increasingly familiar site on restaurant tables around the world.
Once again, I found there was a technological barrier between me and my breakfast. This time, too, there was no way for me to abide by the system. I had indeed brought my fondleslab to Malaysia (as I know all too well it's becoming increasingly difficult to travel without one), but I didn't have cell service in Malaysia and there was no free Wi-Fi in the café. Thus, I was completely unable to scan the code and order.
Faced with this conundrum, I realized I could flag someone down or I could go to the counter, explain the situation, and order from them directly. But I decided I would not do either. In a doubtless-unnoticed act of defiance, I opted to withhold my patronage from a restaurant that was going to force people into the digital panopticon playpen just to order their breakfast. I walked out.
I found a nearby café to start the process again from scratch. This one, too, offered an inviting menu and a friendly vibe. I went to the cash register, ordered my breakfast and got out my wallet to pay.
"Oh, it's cashless payment only," the cashier said with that familiar look of consternation/condescension . . . which was the precise moment I realized I wasn't at a "cash register" at all, but a digital payment register.
Ready to give up on the entire concept of breakfast, I simply shrugged, turned around and began to walk out of the café. Perhaps realizing that dirty old paper money just might have some utility after all, the cashier helpfully offered to pay with his phone if I gave him the cash. In the end, I got my breakfast for those paper ringgit I had been attempting to offload for two days now.
Now, in the big scheme of things, perhaps this was not a particularly important series of events. Maybe it was just the (un)luck of the draw and I just happened to stumble into the few lone places in Malaysia that don't accept cash or have waiters who take orders. Maybe there's nothing to worry about. Maybe a cashless-payment-only enforced diet is good for me.
But still, the Malaysian breakfast ordeal brought into crystal-clear focus something I've known for some time but have never been able to articulate.
Namely this: we are moving into the age of Public Participation as a Service.
The Age of PPaaS
Do you remember back in the day when you could buy software at a store? It came on a floppy disk, remember? You'd take the disk home, load it into your disk drive, and install the program on your computer.
Well, if you do remember those days, I have some bad news for you: you're a dinosaur and you're about to go extinct.
These days, you don't buy software, it doesn't come on a disk, and you certainly don't go to a physical store to get it. That's so 20th century, grampa! Get with the times!
These days, you subscribe to software and you connect to the cloud in order to access it.
Computer geeks have a term for this: Software as a Service, or "SaaS" (if you're feeling sassy).
This model has its benefits, of course. It's fast, it's convenient, and it means that you can automatically access the latest upgrades and updates to whatever software you're using as soon as they're released.
But it also means that you don't actually own most of your digital possessions anymore. Back in the day, if you bought Microsoft Word you'd at least be able to use that version of the software for as long as you could keep your increasingly outdated computer running. But now, as soon as you stop paying your subscription to Microsoft 365, Word (and everything else bundled in that suite) is gone.
In other words, your ability to use SaaS software is contingent on a continuous flow of money to the software manufacturer.
What I'm starting to realize is that we have now entered the age of PPaaS: Public Participation as a Service.
You no longer go to a restaurant, order from a human being, and pay with cash.
Now, you go to a restaurant, use your smartphone and your cellular subscription to scan a QR code to order your food, and pay with your electronic payment app.
And, just like that, things that could once be done by anybody are now reserved for those with the requisite digital devices and service subscriptions.
And it's not just restaurants, of course. As we saw during the scamdemic, QR codes can also be used as a form of digital barrier to accessing public spaces. Now, QR codes and cashless payments are increasingly necessary for someone looking to go to a concert, ride a subway or get a hot dog at a ballpark.
Of course, depending on where you live and how far along the path to digital tyranny you are, there may still be the option to pay with cash or to purchase a physical ticket to ride a subway or go to a concert.
But if my experience in Malaysia has taught me anything, it's that the cash option may not always be there. It could disappear at any time, and when it does, all you can do is hope that some kindly cashier will use his own phone to buy your breakfast for you.
Avoiding the Nightmare
I hope by this point you appreciate just how big a problem this Age of PPaaS actually is.
It's not just that our dependence on Big Tech is nearly total or that our ability to live meaningful, productive lives is increasingly contingent on our ability to pay those tech overlords and digital service providers their monthly pound of flesh.
It's that this technology necessarily brings with it all of the evils of technocracy. Big Tech is now Big Brother. They know where you go, what time you arrive, what time you leave, who you're with, what you're doing and, more often than not, what you're thinking about . . . sometimes before even you do!
And if Big Tech knows, then the Homeland Security state—which, as we already know, is Big Brother's Big Brother—knows too. The feds are quietly watching all the data passing through every major internet platform's servers. And if the government decides it doesn't like where you're going or how long you're there or who you're with or what you're talking about, it will have the power to prevent you from doing that.
It won't require policemen or jackbooted thugs to keep you from going about your business, either. All they'll have to do is cancel your subscriptions, debank you, put you on a no-pass list or otherwise pull the plug on your digital life, and *POOF*—just like that, you'll be unable to participate in public life.
If you have followed this train of thought all the way to that dreadful conclusion, then you'll also know that it's much easier to articulate the Public Participation as a Service nightmare than it is to stop it from becoming a reality.
As individuals going about our daily lives, how on earth do we put the brakes on the runaway freight train that is this societal push toward digitizing our every movement and action? How do we carve out the space to at least preserve the option to not have a smartphone or a mobile plan or a cashless payment app?
Obviously, if I knew the answer to those questions, I'd have already implemented it and we'd be living in a better world right now. But unfortunately, there is very little chance we can turn this around unless and until we can convince a significant percentage of the public that PPaaS is a problem.
This is why I actually think things like the Net Zero blackouts in Europe this past summer or the Storm Eowyn blackouts that plunged hundreds of thousands into digital darkness last winter are actually good things—in a strange way. At the very least, events like these help to remind the vast swaths of the population sleepwalking into the PPaaS nightmare that there is a reason to keep using cash, paper tickets and physical receipts.
But, barring an EMP burst or a Great Carrington Event or some other cataclysm that sends humanity back to the Stone Age and resets the clock on our digital lives, it's difficult to imagine that the overall societal trend toward Public Participation as a Service will change any time soon.
After all, remember that to all the Malaysians going about their everyday business, ordering their breakfast through a QR code and paying with an app is not only normal but expected. From their perspective, I was the odd one for wanting waiters and physical menus.
All I know is that if we don't make a point of boycotting the businesses that are removing the option to pay cash or the option to flag down a waiter or the option to enter a space with a physical ticket, we'll never escape the rush to PPaaS.
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