gimme a couple thousand $$ or suffer pain, and perhaps die

Words uttered by Mafia protection racketeers? Nope. Dentist.
I have an abscess and it is unbelievably painful. Worse, they can kill. I can uderstand that because my brain is all fuzzy with the poison from it. They want a couple of thousand dollars to do something about it. I don't know how they get away with it.

I know. I've heard the arguments. The poor dears spend years learning their trade. But writers, artists, and computer programmers spend all their lives learning their craft. At the end of some years of learning then a dentist, so long as he has reasonable coordination and intelligence can be successful at dentistry. A writer or artist can study all their life and no matter how smart they are they're never guaranteed success.

Computer programming is still more art than craft. You can learn the basics of it in a course or from books, but it still doesn't guarantee that you'll be much good, even if you are brilliant. Even the "obvious" advantage of strongly typed computer languages has recently been shown to be wrong.

For a little time I went to a dentist in Melbourne whose fillings had a bad habit of falling out afterward. Did he give refunds? No way. Dentists giving refunds??? Who ever heard of such a thing?

Yeah I'm feeling sour. Half my face feels like it is rotting away in blinding pain. I can hardly think.