8 ms·

It's amazing how often "illegally" is the American Way. I only wish it were a joke.

by creer 2y ago

eru 2y ago
Americans surely do love to make things illegal.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  https://www.amazon.com.au/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229 https://www.amazon.com.au/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent... Three felonies a day for everyone. More if you use a computer. It's kind of amazing how no one seems to care that the only reason why they aren't in prison currently is that no one's bothered to arrest them yet.
  - nwellinghoff 2y ago
    52 bucks for the paperback! That price is a felony!
  - LtWorf 2y ago
    It's by design to be able to go after anyone. Well known dictatorship method.
- benreesman 2y ago
  The occasional, feeble, rarely enforced speed bumps that we occasionally throw up around some largely performative ideal that working people shouldn’t just get constantly ripped off via structural advantage for self-styled job creators almost always lead to temporary increases in broad based prosperity as judged by honest and humane notions of the common good for Res Publica. A limited but meaningful subset of the population was seeing substantial increases in prosperity in the post war period of comparatively high taxation and comparatively high regulation. It sucks that we didn’t extend those benefits to minorities, that was a glaring flaw, but that was fixable without throwing the whole thing out and handing the reins over to Art Laffer and Milton Friedman and other goblins like that. This is a culture so extreme around its idea of private property and private enterprise that treating human beings as property is a habit of thought as a culture we just can’t seem to quit in spite of a bloody, declared civil war and a thousand violent skirmishes that don’t quite qualify as wars. We’re now deep into a regression on this that has the typical person struggling via a combination of monopoly and monopsony pricing power enabled by blank check lobbyism that creates de facto indentured status for anyone with a kid who needs medication. Low effort quips from people who haven’t felt cold or hunger or illness recently enough to remember are a serious part of the problem.
  - eru 2y ago
    Alas, the straw man you argue against doesn't exist. (Though my adopted homeland of Singapore probably comes closer than the so called Land of the Free.) Remember: even Bill Gates had to fight for a decade or so to get his favourite car imported. And that was when he was the richest guy on the planet. Bloomberg and Romney lost their bids for the presidency against much poorer opponents with less support from the rich. You guys still have minimum wage laws on the books, too. Rent control and price controls ('anti-price gouging laws') are ever popular. To name just a few examples. > This is a culture so extreme around its idea of private property and private enterprise that treating human beings as property is a habit of thought as a culture we just can’t seem to quit in spite of a bloody, declared civil war and a thousand violent skirmishes that don’t quite qualify as wars. You know that (orthodox) economics is known as the dismal science because they opposed slavery? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science Please don't brand Milton Friedman as some kind of slavery advocate. > Low effort quips from people who haven’t felt cold or hunger or illness recently enough to remember are a serious part of the problem. I don't think they make much of a difference on way or another. But you are right, that thanks to relatively freer markets, more and more people can enjoy the ignorance of bliss of not knowing what hunger feels like. That's how progress looks like.
    - benreesman 2y ago
      It is beyond dispute that liberalizing the markets in a society is an almost guaranteed way to lift a society out of a confused manufacturing sector and into a much better organized manufacturing sector: markets are a much better way to price cars and consumer electronics than planning committee guesses. No one disputes that other than Jensen Huang. But using a log scale and a ruler to apologize for flagrant grift is nothing to do with capitalism, markets, democracy, common sense, or humanity. Rent seeking is the original sin of capitalism: don’t take my word for it, re-read your Adam Smith and pay attention this time. And if by “you guys” you mean advocates for the broader public? To the death.
      - benreesman 2y ago
- rsynnott 2y ago
  US consumer protection law is actually fairly feeble compared to, say, the EU equivalents, generally (for a particularly dramatic example see treatment of EULAs and similar). The US does seem keen on making regulations terribly _complex_, but not particularly strong.
- creer 2y ago
  > Americans surely do love to make things illegal. That's certainly not the issue here - where the secret was to avoid informing or giving time to think by skipping the fine print.
douglee650 2y ago
"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime"
- bee_rider 2y ago
  In this case it is more like “Behind every mediocre fortune is a pretty lame crime.” Like it isn’t even a cool crime, like doing a heist or something. It’s just tricking confused people by not letting them know about the fine print.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Yep, fraud is pretty lame…
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Or to translate a dutch expression, "whoever does not steal or inherit will work until they die" (it rhymes in dutch).
  - namaria 2y ago
    The owning class wants no competitors. The only way to get there is to break the rules that those who got there before create and enforce.
azinman2 2y ago
What makes you think this is uniquely American versus human?
- koolba 2y ago
  On the contrary, it’s the immigrants that understand it better than the native born.
torginus 2y ago
This whole thing feels like drawing blood from stone. If your company/industry is abusive and miserly, you can go above and beyond and still make a pittance. If you put in the effort, the years, whatever, what you could get is a token recogniton of your efforts like raising your wages from minimum wage to 30% above that. Poverty, scarcity and desperation drives people to evil. If you work a stable job for a respectable wage for an industry that makes money, and is willing to share said money with you, all this stuff sounds strange to you. All the machiavellian scheming and power games that take place in a call center on the shift manager level might only show up close to C-level in an IT company, as its only there that the opportunities grow scarce enough, and the people desperate enough that these darwinian environments arise.

It's amazing how often "illegally" is the American Way. I only wish it were a joke.

by creer 2y ago

It's amazing how often "illegally" is the American Way. I only wish it were a joke.

eru 2y ago

Americans surely do love to make things illegal.

llm_trw 2y ago
https://www.amazon.com.au/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229 https://www.amazon.com.au/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent... Three felonies a day for everyone. More if you use a computer. It's kind of amazing how no one seems to care that the only reason why they aren't in prison currently is that no one's bothered to arrest them yet.
- nwellinghoff 2y ago
  52 bucks for the paperback! That price is a felony!
- LtWorf 2y ago
  It's by design to be able to go after anyone. Well known dictatorship method.
benreesman 2y ago
The occasional, feeble, rarely enforced speed bumps that we occasionally throw up around some largely performative ideal that working people shouldn’t just get constantly ripped off via structural advantage for self-styled job creators almost always lead to temporary increases in broad based prosperity as judged by honest and humane notions of the common good for Res Publica. A limited but meaningful subset of the population was seeing substantial increases in prosperity in the post war period of comparatively high taxation and comparatively high regulation. It sucks that we didn’t extend those benefits to minorities, that was a glaring flaw, but that was fixable without throwing the whole thing out and handing the reins over to Art Laffer and Milton Friedman and other goblins like that. This is a culture so extreme around its idea of private property and private enterprise that treating human beings as property is a habit of thought as a culture we just can’t seem to quit in spite of a bloody, declared civil war and a thousand violent skirmishes that don’t quite qualify as wars. We’re now deep into a regression on this that has the typical person struggling via a combination of monopoly and monopsony pricing power enabled by blank check lobbyism that creates de facto indentured status for anyone with a kid who needs medication. Low effort quips from people who haven’t felt cold or hunger or illness recently enough to remember are a serious part of the problem.
- eru 2y ago
  Alas, the straw man you argue against doesn't exist. (Though my adopted homeland of Singapore probably comes closer than the so called Land of the Free.) Remember: even Bill Gates had to fight for a decade or so to get his favourite car imported. And that was when he was the richest guy on the planet. Bloomberg and Romney lost their bids for the presidency against much poorer opponents with less support from the rich. You guys still have minimum wage laws on the books, too. Rent control and price controls ('anti-price gouging laws') are ever popular. To name just a few examples. > This is a culture so extreme around its idea of private property and private enterprise that treating human beings as property is a habit of thought as a culture we just can’t seem to quit in spite of a bloody, declared civil war and a thousand violent skirmishes that don’t quite qualify as wars. You know that (orthodox) economics is known as the dismal science because they opposed slavery? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science Please don't brand Milton Friedman as some kind of slavery advocate. > Low effort quips from people who haven’t felt cold or hunger or illness recently enough to remember are a serious part of the problem. I don't think they make much of a difference on way or another. But you are right, that thanks to relatively freer markets, more and more people can enjoy the ignorance of bliss of not knowing what hunger feels like. That's how progress looks like.
  - benreesman 2y ago
    It is beyond dispute that liberalizing the markets in a society is an almost guaranteed way to lift a society out of a confused manufacturing sector and into a much better organized manufacturing sector: markets are a much better way to price cars and consumer electronics than planning committee guesses. No one disputes that other than Jensen Huang. But using a log scale and a ruler to apologize for flagrant grift is nothing to do with capitalism, markets, democracy, common sense, or humanity. Rent seeking is the original sin of capitalism: don’t take my word for it, re-read your Adam Smith and pay attention this time. And if by “you guys” you mean advocates for the broader public? To the death.
    - benreesman 2y ago
rsynnott 2y ago
US consumer protection law is actually fairly feeble compared to, say, the EU equivalents, generally (for a particularly dramatic example see treatment of EULAs and similar). The US does seem keen on making regulations terribly _complex_, but not particularly strong.
creer 2y ago
> Americans surely do love to make things illegal. That's certainly not the issue here - where the secret was to avoid informing or giving time to think by skipping the fine print.

douglee650 2y ago

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime"

bee_rider 2y ago
In this case it is more like “Behind every mediocre fortune is a pretty lame crime.” Like it isn’t even a cool crime, like doing a heist or something. It’s just tricking confused people by not letting them know about the fine print.
- Retric 2y ago
  Yep, fraud is pretty lame…
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Or to translate a dutch expression, "whoever does not steal or inherit will work until they die" (it rhymes in dutch).
- namaria 2y ago
  The owning class wants no competitors. The only way to get there is to break the rules that those who got there before create and enforce.

azinman2 2y ago

What makes you think this is uniquely American versus human?

koolba 2y ago
On the contrary, it’s the immigrants that understand it better than the native born.

torginus 2y ago

This whole thing feels like drawing blood from stone. If your company/industry is abusive and miserly, you can go above and beyond and still make a pittance. If you put in the effort, the years, whatever, what you could get is a token recogniton of your efforts like raising your wages from minimum wage to 30% above that. Poverty, scarcity and desperation drives people to evil. If you work a stable job for a respectable wage for an industry that makes money, and is willing to share said money with you, all this stuff sounds strange to you. All the machiavellian scheming and power games that take place in a call center on the shift manager level might only show up close to C-level in an IT company, as its only there that the opportunities grow scarce enough, and the people desperate enough that these darwinian environments arise.