The funeral home business is a disgusting racket that plays on people's emotions and hopes to make money.

That statistic is extremely misleading. You can cremate someone and have a meaningful funeral in your home or with your spiritual leader for less than a grand, as it should be.

It costs so much because these funeral homes charge bizarre amounts of money for a wood box that you'll never see again, embalming that is ultimately pointless and uncommon throughout the world, a patch of dirt and associated nonsense like thousands of bucks for a fucking engraved landscaping rock that sells for less than a hundred for any other purpose, hundreds for a liner to make the whole stupid "pile of corpses" idea work. It's expensive because we've made it expensive, not because that's just how it is to die.

It's a scam. Ruining your finances for the dead is socially accepted because of these ghouls, all while we have responsible, effective alternatives. It's gross.