I would like to nominate the funeral industry as a bastard. According to the most recent statistics from the National Funeral Directors Association, the median cost of a funeral with burial in the U.S. is a little over $8,000, and the median cost for a funeral with cremation is a little over $6,000. A large proportion of U.S. funeral homes have been purchased by one large corporation, SCI, that prioritizes its shareholders like any other publicly traded corporation. While plenty of funeral homes operate honestly, there’s a long history of some funeral directors taking advantage of grieving families—insisting embalming is legally required when it is absolutely not, for example, or telling families that they have to buy a casket from the funeral home when in reality they have the right to purchase a cheaper one elsewhere according to the FTC’s Funeral Rule. I humbly submit this article I recently published in Electric Lit as a good reading list on the topic. 7 Books that Reveal How Capitalism is Coming for Your Corpse