6 ms·

When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away with" model of society? Maybe I'm naive but I think there used to be at least a modicum of self-r

by llimos 3y ago

When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away with" model of society? Maybe I'm naive but I think there used to be at least a modicum of self-restraint on this kind of thing. Sure, people always tried to make as much money as possible, but there used to be some limit somewhere - not because you'll get caught but because c'mon, we just don't do that! That seems to have now been totally lost.

light_hue_1 3y ago
Because the cost of fraud is far too low and it's now factored into business plans. And no executive at FedEx will go to jail for this. When you can break the law for less than the profits you get for breaking the law, that's just got business sense.
- IE6 3y ago
  > the cost of fraud is far too low > no executive will go to jail for this This seems to be the pervasive trend
dylan604 3y ago
>When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away with" model of society? When were we not there?
- willcipriano 3y ago
  Lots of little girls and boys are taught that and end up somewhere screaming "but that's not fair!" in the rain.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    And quickly realize they were lied to when they were taught things were fair to begin with, which reading between the lines argues that it wasn't fair to begin with. All of which to say, you just reiterated my point.
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      I'm agreeing with you, the problem is we teach them it is fair and a lot of people don't get the memo.
PragmaticPulp 3y ago
> When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away with" model of society? If you judge society by the worst headlines and stories from social media then it’s going to seem very bad You have to consider that news and social media only talk about the extreme stories. It’s not representative of normal
- mistermann 3y ago
  What's normal isn't all that matters though, and the broad consequences of the behavior of the capitalist class are starting to creep quite deeply into what's normal for a lot of middle and lower class people. Personally, I would like that to be countered much more like how they do things in China. Making an example of some bad apples can be very persuasive.
- omniglottal 3y ago
  The measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members. These headlines are showing that the class of "weakest members" has grown to include most of the population. A representative of "normal" criminals demonatrates they are free to operate with healthy profit margins.
jasonlotito 3y ago
It’s always been this way. Hell, the entire tech industry is this way. No one is innocent, and society is generally fine with it. What might be new is the fact that you hear so much more about it now because of the internet. What was once just local news before is now easily amplified. Society hasn’t so much as changed as we’ve become more aware of all of the issues. And to top it all off, a lot of people want to go back to that again. Because ignorance is bliss.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  It definitely wasn’t always this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_capitalism Not that I agree with welfare capitalism, I think it’s an unstable position and greed would always kill it. But let’s not forget that for some people, the past was definitely better than the present when it came to some economic matters. Note: I’m not excusing or wanting the bigotry of the past.
  - jasonlotito 3y ago
    That seems much more limited than what I was talking about. "When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away with" model of society? That's what I was talking about, and it's much broader than what's covered by welfare capitalism. > But let’s not forget that for some people, the past was definitely better than the present We are talking about society as a whole. And "do whatever you think you can get away with" implies that it will be better for some people. Just because life it great doesn't mean people aren't doing whatever they think they can get away with. Just because the past was better doesn't change my assertion.
aaomidi 3y ago
I think we were here for a lot of time in a lot of industries, but then specific people bring it to other industries. Elon brought this to tech in an extreme way. This problem won’t be solved until CEOs and execs are able to take over behind limited liability.
mytailorisrich 3y ago
There was never restraint and it used to be much worse. This is why the large body of laws and regulations we have today came into being. Edit: Also, in the West society in general is one of abundance with people housed, clothed and educated in school from birth, which IMHO removes a lot of incentives for scams and fraud. But it used to be (and still is in some countries) that most people were born with nothing in a very tough environment and had to fight just to eat every day. The world of Charles Dickens was real.
- throwaway173738 3y ago
  It’s also why funding our institutions and fighting to keep them honest is so damn important. Regulation is insufficient without enforcement.
  - betaby 3y ago
    But that's precisely the problem! Every aspect of the life is over regulated and smaller bushiness are kneecapped On other side big companies can get away with whatever. At some states florist is a regulated profession and requires more hours of training than for police. "For my friends everything, for my enemies the law".
    - bentcorner 3y ago
      > and requires more hours of training than for police. Citation? Best I could find is that Louisiana regulates floristry but doesn't mandate education (you need to take an exam). As for taking more hours of training than police I think you are conflating that fact in your head with this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cosmetologists-police-training/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cosmetologists-police-trai... Besides, I'm not sure how you got here in a thread about how Fedex, a "big compan[y] [which] can get away with whatever" getting caught scamming people.
      - betaby 3y ago
        > Citation? https://www.on.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/requirements/24582/QC https://www.on.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/requirements/24582... Florist, regulated in QC, training is ~1K hours. https://www.quebec.ca/en/government/quebec-at-a-glance/first-nations-and-inuit/police-training-indigenous-students https://www.quebec.ca/en/government/quebec-at-a-glance/first... training is also ~1K hours. > Besides, I'm not sure how you got here in a thread about how Fedex, a "big compan[y] [which] can get away with whatever" getting caught scamming people. Car sales (any many other things) are heavily regulated where I live. Also it seems regulations are not enforced if one is 'too big to fall'.
saiya-jin 3y ago
I think you are painting past very nicely, ie DuPont has been knowingly contaminating whole world since 80s at least. That's my childhood years, for sure I wasn't aware of anything similar happening. That doesn't mean it wasn't, news reel was setup differently these days. In 3rd world countries this would not raise eyebrows at all, there were (and still are) big issues around exactly this with used cars in Eastern Europe. People got addicted to ever more shocking news, I guess 9/11 in the west helped with that. Once you burn your receptors and they go back to flatline, the next kick needs to be a bit stronger to keep people engaged, and next one even more so. So just consuming news is a never ending progression of bad, amoral and over time progressively worse stuff.
Veliladon 3y ago
It was always like that. At all points throughout history. So law makers put in laws and regulations that had punitive fines on the conduct for businesses. 49 U.S.C § 32703, the law that makes federal odometer fraud a crime, was passed in October 1972 and had a $10,000 fine for screwing with an odometer. If inflation kept up with the punishment it'd be $71,897.64 today. But time passes, fine amounts don't get touched, and eventually it's profitable on the whole to do it. $10,000 if you get caught? That's less than the profit of the deal, so who cares? The conduct resumes.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bee_rider 3y ago
When you came, you said to me as follows : “I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots.” You left then but you did not do what you promised me. You put ingots which were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin) and said: “If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!” https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/537889-oldest-written-customer-complaint https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/537889-ol...
huijzer 3y ago
> When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away with" model of society? In the late 1980s, Koch Industries stole millions of crude oil each year by instructing their employees to always measure in a way that benefited Koch Industries [1]. [1]: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/22/kochland-excerpt-senate-investigation-oil-theft-native-american-tribes-227412/ https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/22/kochland-...
- HumblyTossed 3y ago
  And they used the profits from that to nearly completely corrupt our government.
  - short_throw 3y ago
    If you think the entirety of corruption in the US is recent and tied to a specific family you need to switch to a media source with more nuance.
    - HumblyTossed 3y ago
      Oh, there's a whole list of Right wing nut job orgs. The dominionists who think it's their god given right to rule. The CNP, who think not enough white babies being born. Just to name a couple. They all dump money into the government.
JustBreath 3y ago
Honestly I'd lean towards naive. If anything, suspect on a national / global scale there's far more capacity for society to hold people and organizations accountable than any time in history. "Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders." - Wear Sunscreen
- tacocataco 3y ago
  There is so much effort to distort history and the reporting of current events. If you don't learn history, and then lso not pay attention to what's happening around you, of course you will pine for the good old days when it was easier to control the narrative.
seneca 3y ago
The US had golden years after World War 2. We had abundance, effective institutions, and high trust. We've been slowly coming off of that high for a while, and are returning to what is arguably a more typical state. Our institutions are crumbling, and societal trust is nose diving. Abundance still has a ways to go though.
- justapassenger 3y ago
  > We had abundance, effective institutions, and high trust Yes! Everyone was a millionaire, law was perfect, no intuitions were abusing their powers, no government agencies ran experiments on unsuspecting citizens, everyone was friendly, no one stole anything, no corporation ever lied to the public about dangers of their products, no one was killed, etc! Good old days! Sarcasm aside, there were things that were better, but also huge amount of things was way worse.
paxys 3y ago
When people committing these crimes could start hiding behind the safety of a "corporation".
dayvid 3y ago
That's existed for a long time. It's just easier to catch people nowadays.
codexb 3y ago
Are you kidding? It used to be common knowledge that virtually every used car dealer was committing some sort of odometer or other fraud just 25-30 years ago. The advent of anti-tampering devices in cars, manufacturer certified pre-owned, carfax, listing of odometer values on registrations and insurance forms, and hefty fines (and even prison) for dealer fraud cut down on that.
arbitrage 3y ago
It's still like this. Women and minorities get targeted by this sort of stuff all the time.
CameronNemo 3y ago
Have you heard of Cecil Rhodes?
lmm 3y ago
When our shared cultural identity broke down, which I think was maybe late-'90s / early-'00s? "American" used to be practically an ethnicity. Now everyone knows their neighbour isn't like them and doesn't have the same values as them - so you might as well screw them for all they're worth.

by llimos 3y ago

light_hue_1 3y ago

Because the cost of fraud is far too low and it's now factored into business plans. And no executive at FedEx will go to jail for this. When you can break the law for less than the profits you get for breaking the law, that's just got business sense.

IE6 3y ago
> the cost of fraud is far too low > no executive will go to jail for this This seems to be the pervasive trend

dylan604 3y ago

>When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away with" model of society? When were we not there?

willcipriano 3y ago
Lots of little girls and boys are taught that and end up somewhere screaming "but that's not fair!" in the rain.
- dylan604 3y ago
  And quickly realize they were lied to when they were taught things were fair to begin with, which reading between the lines argues that it wasn't fair to begin with. All of which to say, you just reiterated my point.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    I'm agreeing with you, the problem is we teach them it is fair and a lot of people don't get the memo.

PragmaticPulp 3y ago

> When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away with" model of society? If you judge society by the worst headlines and stories from social media then it’s going to seem very bad You have to consider that news and social media only talk about the extreme stories. It’s not representative of normal

mistermann 3y ago
What's normal isn't all that matters though, and the broad consequences of the behavior of the capitalist class are starting to creep quite deeply into what's normal for a lot of middle and lower class people. Personally, I would like that to be countered much more like how they do things in China. Making an example of some bad apples can be very persuasive.
omniglottal 3y ago
The measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members. These headlines are showing that the class of "weakest members" has grown to include most of the population. A representative of "normal" criminals demonatrates they are free to operate with healthy profit margins.

jasonlotito 3y ago

It’s always been this way. Hell, the entire tech industry is this way. No one is innocent, and society is generally fine with it. What might be new is the fact that you hear so much more about it now because of the internet. What was once just local news before is now easily amplified. Society hasn’t so much as changed as we’ve become more aware of all of the issues. And to top it all off, a lot of people want to go back to that again. Because ignorance is bliss.

aaomidi 3y ago
It definitely wasn’t always this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_capitalism Not that I agree with welfare capitalism, I think it’s an unstable position and greed would always kill it. But let’s not forget that for some people, the past was definitely better than the present when it came to some economic matters. Note: I’m not excusing or wanting the bigotry of the past.
- jasonlotito 3y ago
  That seems much more limited than what I was talking about. "When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away with" model of society? That's what I was talking about, and it's much broader than what's covered by welfare capitalism. > But let’s not forget that for some people, the past was definitely better than the present We are talking about society as a whole. And "do whatever you think you can get away with" implies that it will be better for some people. Just because life it great doesn't mean people aren't doing whatever they think they can get away with. Just because the past was better doesn't change my assertion.

aaomidi 3y ago

I think we were here for a lot of time in a lot of industries, but then specific people bring it to other industries. Elon brought this to tech in an extreme way. This problem won’t be solved until CEOs and execs are able to take over behind limited liability.

mytailorisrich 3y ago

There was never restraint and it used to be much worse. This is why the large body of laws and regulations we have today came into being. Edit: Also, in the West society in general is one of abundance with people housed, clothed and educated in school from birth, which IMHO removes a lot of incentives for scams and fraud. But it used to be (and still is in some countries) that most people were born with nothing in a very tough environment and had to fight just to eat every day. The world of Charles Dickens was real.

throwaway173738 3y ago
It’s also why funding our institutions and fighting to keep them honest is so damn important. Regulation is insufficient without enforcement.
- betaby 3y ago
  But that's precisely the problem! Every aspect of the life is over regulated and smaller bushiness are kneecapped On other side big companies can get away with whatever. At some states florist is a regulated profession and requires more hours of training than for police. "For my friends everything, for my enemies the law".
  - bentcorner 3y ago
    > and requires more hours of training than for police. Citation? Best I could find is that Louisiana regulates floristry but doesn't mandate education (you need to take an exam). As for taking more hours of training than police I think you are conflating that fact in your head with this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cosmetologists-police-training/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cosmetologists-police-trai... Besides, I'm not sure how you got here in a thread about how Fedex, a "big compan[y] [which] can get away with whatever" getting caught scamming people.
    - betaby 3y ago
      > Citation? https://www.on.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/requirements/24582/QC https://www.on.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/requirements/24582... Florist, regulated in QC, training is ~1K hours. https://www.quebec.ca/en/government/quebec-at-a-glance/first-nations-and-inuit/police-training-indigenous-students https://www.quebec.ca/en/government/quebec-at-a-glance/first... training is also ~1K hours. > Besides, I'm not sure how you got here in a thread about how Fedex, a "big compan[y] [which] can get away with whatever" getting caught scamming people. Car sales (any many other things) are heavily regulated where I live. Also it seems regulations are not enforced if one is 'too big to fall'.

saiya-jin 3y ago

I think you are painting past very nicely, ie DuPont has been knowingly contaminating whole world since 80s at least. That's my childhood years, for sure I wasn't aware of anything similar happening. That doesn't mean it wasn't, news reel was setup differently these days. In 3rd world countries this would not raise eyebrows at all, there were (and still are) big issues around exactly this with used cars in Eastern Europe. People got addicted to ever more shocking news, I guess 9/11 in the west helped with that. Once you burn your receptors and they go back to flatline, the next kick needs to be a bit stronger to keep people engaged, and next one even more so. So just consuming news is a never ending progression of bad, amoral and over time progressively worse stuff.

Veliladon 3y ago

It was always like that. At all points throughout history. So law makers put in laws and regulations that had punitive fines on the conduct for businesses. 49 U.S.C § 32703, the law that makes federal odometer fraud a crime, was passed in October 1972 and had a $10,000 fine for screwing with an odometer. If inflation kept up with the punishment it'd be $71,897.64 today. But time passes, fine amounts don't get touched, and eventually it's profitable on the whole to do it. $10,000 if you get caught? That's less than the profit of the deal, so who cares? The conduct resumes.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bee_rider 3y ago

When you came, you said to me as follows : “I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots.” You left then but you did not do what you promised me. You put ingots which were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin) and said: “If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!” https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/537889-oldest-written-customer-complaint https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/537889-ol...

huijzer 3y ago

> When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away with" model of society? In the late 1980s, Koch Industries stole millions of crude oil each year by instructing their employees to always measure in a way that benefited Koch Industries [1]. [1]: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/22/kochland-excerpt-senate-investigation-oil-theft-native-american-tribes-227412/ https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/22/kochland-...

HumblyTossed 3y ago
And they used the profits from that to nearly completely corrupt our government.
- short_throw 3y ago
  If you think the entirety of corruption in the US is recent and tied to a specific family you need to switch to a media source with more nuance.
  - HumblyTossed 3y ago
    Oh, there's a whole list of Right wing nut job orgs. The dominionists who think it's their god given right to rule. The CNP, who think not enough white babies being born. Just to name a couple. They all dump money into the government.

JustBreath 3y ago

Honestly I'd lean towards naive. If anything, suspect on a national / global scale there's far more capacity for society to hold people and organizations accountable than any time in history. "Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders." - Wear Sunscreen

tacocataco 3y ago
There is so much effort to distort history and the reporting of current events. If you don't learn history, and then lso not pay attention to what's happening around you, of course you will pine for the good old days when it was easier to control the narrative.

seneca 3y ago

The US had golden years after World War 2. We had abundance, effective institutions, and high trust. We've been slowly coming off of that high for a while, and are returning to what is arguably a more typical state. Our institutions are crumbling, and societal trust is nose diving. Abundance still has a ways to go though.

justapassenger 3y ago
> We had abundance, effective institutions, and high trust Yes! Everyone was a millionaire, law was perfect, no intuitions were abusing their powers, no government agencies ran experiments on unsuspecting citizens, everyone was friendly, no one stole anything, no corporation ever lied to the public about dangers of their products, no one was killed, etc! Good old days! Sarcasm aside, there were things that were better, but also huge amount of things was way worse.

paxys 3y ago

When people committing these crimes could start hiding behind the safety of a "corporation".

dayvid 3y ago

That's existed for a long time. It's just easier to catch people nowadays.

codexb 3y ago

Are you kidding? It used to be common knowledge that virtually every used car dealer was committing some sort of odometer or other fraud just 25-30 years ago. The advent of anti-tampering devices in cars, manufacturer certified pre-owned, carfax, listing of odometer values on registrations and insurance forms, and hefty fines (and even prison) for dealer fraud cut down on that.

arbitrage 3y ago

It's still like this. Women and minorities get targeted by this sort of stuff all the time.

CameronNemo 3y ago

Have you heard of Cecil Rhodes?

lmm 3y ago

When our shared cultural identity broke down, which I think was maybe late-'90s / early-'00s? "American" used to be practically an ethnicity. Now everyone knows their neighbour isn't like them and doesn't have the same values as them - so you might as well screw them for all they're worth.