Are Those Points Actually a Gain?
"Do you have a points card?" At every checkout, we give a small nod to that question. We hand over the card, and a number ticks up by a fraction on the screen. With each purchase, a little value accumulates, like a bonus on top. It feels like a gain. So where does that "bonus" actually come from? I would like to take a moment and observe.
A bonus is not born from nothing
When you shop, a percentage of what you spend is "returned" to you. Or a number grows based on how far you travel or how much you spend. Most people receive this as a small kindness from the store — a thoughtful little gesture. But stores are not running charities.
In this universe, just as energy cannot be created from nothing, value does not simply appear out of thin air. That percentage coming back to you was not taken from someone else's wallet and added to yours as a gift. It was quietly included in the price you just paid, from the very beginning. There is no need to invoke the conservation law of physics — the point is simply this: the amount that comes back was paid in advance.
You pay first and receive a little back later
The word "cashback" (returning something to you) sounds as if something that became the store's property is being specially returned. But the order is reversed. You first pay a price that already includes the source of that "bonus." Then, some of it comes back to you later in the form of a number. You pay a little more upfront, and receive a little back afterward. Whether you have actually gained anything, net of all that, is far from clear.
And yet the small pleasure of the moment when something comes back cleanly covers over any sense that you might have overpaid in the first place. The amount you may have lost vanishes in the instant of payment; only the amount that returns stays visible, in sharp focus, as a number. What we remember is always the latter. Perhaps you could have bought the same thing somewhere else for less. But while your attention is on the number coming back, the urge to check that "what if" somehow never quite arises.
Accumulated numbers cannot leave that place
The numbers that stack up have one more quality. In most cases, they cannot be used just anywhere. They hold their value only inside that one store, that chain, that ecosystem.
The larger the number grows, the more we are drawn back to that place. If I buy here again, this number will grow further. If I move elsewhere, everything I have patiently accumulated gets left behind. Just as a larger body exerts stronger gravity and holds things in orbit around it, accumulated numbers become an invisible force that keeps you anchored to the same place. Without noticing, we find ourselves gradually trading away the freedom to choose — all in the belief that we are getting a better deal.
And those numbers usually carry an expiration date. If time passes without using them, everything you so carefully built up one day quietly disappears. What you thought you were holding turns out to have been shrinking. Without asking permission. Simply as a date rolls over.
The same mechanism as "free"
I recognize this structure. I once wrote about the words "free shipping" (/en/articles/quiet-notice-c1). The effort of delivery, and its cost, never disappeared. They were simply dissolved into the product price and made invisible with the word "free." Points and cashback work in much the same way. Rather than eliminating a burden, they move it somewhere out of sight, then paint over the top of it with the bright word "gain."
Come to think of it, I recently wrote about savings (/en/articles/quiet-notice-c11). The money you deposit is not sleeping in a vault — that was the point. Using the same word "accumulate," it seems we imagine a great many things as quietly holding still somewhere, when they are not.
Even so, it is fine to accumulate
This is not an argument against earning points. If you are going to shop in the same place anyway, you may as well receive what comes back. The mechanism itself is not the problem. Knowing how it works and then choosing to use it is a completely different position from being used by it without knowing — even with the same card in your hand.
I will record just one thing. The next time a number goes up and you feel a small sense of gain: that "bonus" did not fall from the sky. It is simply a part of what you paid first, coming back to you in a different form, in a smaller amount. And that number is quietly keeping you tethered to the same place.
What counts as a gain, and what counts as a loss — in most cases, the one drawing that line is the side distributing the points.
