th
 

For some of these business arrangements, you only "play stupidly" and there's no such thing as "playing it smart". Take a look at many of the businesses you want to see thrive and not weighed down with government regulation. Their business model is to trap stoopid people into doing stoopid things. Why else wouldn't these companies be up front about their terms? Want to hose customers? Don't use .4 font size. Explain the deal accurately (disclosure) and if you get business - fine. Why would you object to disclosure rules? (Your post seems to say you'd be against disclosure rules too).

I see the protection argument differently. Take for instance a scam where a customer signs onto a credit card with zero interest for a year and so customer gets a 10,000 interest free loan for a year so he can fix up his house. The card terms say if he is late on a payment, he has to start paying interest and it is outrageously high. In a month or two, credit card company sends him his monthly bill late and when his payment is therefore "late", the company now gets to enjoy a really high interest rate from him and all the other customers they suckered (because it was in their business model all along that most customers sent late bills would make late payments). Company points to fine print that has a provision saying customer has to make payment every month even if he/she doesn't get a bill. If the customer doesn't know how much balance he has to pay, he should have called before the due date. You'd want all this to go on unregulated? Why? How about if the provision wasn't in the fine print, but the fine print simply said "if you want more details about payment terms, you have the right to contact us and we'll send more information."

Same bullshit applies when customers are tricked into buying insurance premiums they don't need when they can't see (just as the company planned) the reference that signing some other document (unrelated) means they are agreeing they want life insurance.

Think about the scams that could perpetrated on your grandmother, boy!

th
 

Its like porn channels. You don't like it? You don't want it? Change the fucking channel.

Nobody is forcing anybody into these deals. People will always have the option to just say "no, thanks." You throw away about five or ten financing offers a week, right? Well, so can everyone else.

Sales is a game of trickery. You are being separated from your money. Fraud is one thing, but I see tons of people who say "Yeh, but I didn't know that" when someone tries to enforce a contract aginst them. And they're not just disadvantaged folks. Businessmen claims stupidity as a defense to signing integrated agreements all the time. "Fraud in the inducement" is so forgiving and so frequently used these days that a lot of contracts aren't worth their paper's value.

People need to learn they cannot go out and grab fast cash from a loan shark, then cry "I was robbed" later and go running to a class action lawyer or regulator. We've traiend a lot of society to believe they have no duty to perform any of their own due diligence. No wonder we're such a fucked up pack of people.

th
 

I'm not sure you read her whole post. Dude, this could interfere with your inheritance.

More Republicans for states' rights
 

So Nebraska should be able to compete with other states on food labeling requirements, unless it's competing for your tourism dollar? Why should the ratchet be one way? If you trust states to impose higher standards, why not trust them to impose lower standards, if that's what their citizens want? And if you choose to go there, well, don't eat the fish, or don't go there, or take the same chances anyone in Nebraska takes.

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

Only after the warranty expires.

S_A_M

th
 

That's pretty much how it was from, say, 1840 (or whenever the Industrial Revolution kicked in here) until about 1930 or so. We didn't much like the results. Thus, 50+ years of your dreaded attempted "social fixes", some of which work better than others.

Maybe in one sense it makes people "weak" -- just as I think enhanced technology has led to a proliferation of people with weak eyesight. So, should we kill everyone who needs glasses, or just sell hunting permits?

S_A_M

More Republicans for states' rights
 

Never mind Upton Sinclair -- let's not have food safety regulations at all. If that's what Congress decides, the food must be safe.

Don't make people need to read Upton Sinclair again. Or maybe Tom Lehrer can update his song.

• If you visit
  American city
  you will find it
  very pretty
  just two things
  of which you must beware
  don't drink the water
  and don't breathe the air

More Republicans for states' rights
 

Silly Ty. The heavy-handed goverment should simply let the market deal with this. People who want safe food will demand it, and companies will cater to this market demand. Meanwhile, those who make the rational choice to buy cheaper food continue to have the right to do so. Freedom of contract!

th
 

What inheritance? My folks are pissing everything they've got away, which would never be sufficnent to feed my appetitite for consuming to fill the void a point in life would provide anyway. They've told my sister and I that neither of us deserve a nickel of anything they have.

And they're right. I tip my glass to them. Die leaving nothing but bills. They earned whatever they have. I'm not entitled to shit. No one is. They've been more than patient and decent and frankly, princes about the two of us. If they can't have anything but selfish asshole kids, then they should at least get to waste their lives' earnings in peace.

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

I'm not really sure that I am boycotting Iams and Gateway simply because I don't happen to use their products. That said, I think the reason pro-choice people are being asked to boycott these companies is because they pay some revenue to the state and a decline in their revenue may hurt the state. I'm not sure if it's "really stupid" or not. I agree it has a remote chance of actually doing anything. Why do you think it's "really stupid" other than the remoteness argument?

Why is the first letter of abortion capitalized?

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

Like "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?", you have asked one of the great unanswerable questions in the world.

th
 

I recall as a child hearing a crazy very elderly great uncle rail about how things were much better before the income tax. The problem with unwinding all the social fixes of today are no one is alive to tell us whether it was better before thei implementation and so many people make a living based on those programs and laws today that to undo them would put a quarter of white collar workers out on the street. Those are, of course, not reasons to avoid a needed discussion about dismantling the bloated govt we have at the state and fed levels. So instead, we operate under the fiction that things are better than they were before income tax and govt regulation. There's a case to be made for either side, but if you try to argue against the present status quo, you'll be villified as an absurdist or mean hearted Darwinian prick. So the real merits of the debate are never fleshed out.

Bush has angered the piss out of the Beltway just for even suggesting we should hold such a debate. To people who live their lives dealing with the govt in all its forms, thats killing the golden goose. So they offer a moralist argument that any attempt to dismantle govt is an attack on the weak who need govt.

Bullshit. Its job protection.

th
 

Crazy old uncle's ramblings vs. Great Depression data

Ok.

th
 

Actually, there's a fair number of people alive (like my grandmother) who could tell you all about how much better things are today than they were before Social Security and other New Deal regulatory and entitlement programs were passed.

th
 

Yep. My theory is that between the cirrhosis, STDs, and lung cancer, Sebby's relations tend to die young.

S_A_M