Parasites like this have also colonized plumbing, locksmiths etc, as has been discussed on this site in the past.
Seems like straight up fraud to me.
Seems like straight up fraud to me.
Doctorow calls them out in the thread: AmEx and Google in particular.
Isn't there a small thing called "regulators" for this? Or is US government now so fundamentally broken that it can't even provide its basic function anymore and has to be replaced by "pretty-please" appeals to megacorporations?
The latter, partly.
But a bigger problem is that actually-functional government is no longer part of the worldview of most of the public. Ditto for serious consequences for the responsible elected officials, when government fails at its basic functions.
Without those things, it is really not possible to sustain a high-functioning government.
The state enforcing laws using the threat of violence (the only enforcement mechanism they have) is a last resort, not a first. Institutions having the desire to not create a broken world should be the first line of defense.
Google doesn't give a fuck anymore, and are fine watching the world burn now. I personally speculate that most Googlers today are simply there for the paycheck, and their apathy about the way their products work reflects that.
Now what?
Huh? Why's this? It seems like a core component of a functional state to me, and if the state is doing a decent job, why should a bunch of private parties be sticking their noses in too?
Same with Catholics and confession-- another broken system in which you are free to sin arbitrarily through confession and repentance. The point of the doctrine itself is to transcend the cycle and be better than that. (I know little about it but I'm told there is a similar mechanism in Hinduism re: karma.)
Fear of god/state/consequence keeps people in line, but it's a failsafe, not the governor. The only thing preventing fraud in your tribe should not be the intangible threat of later consequence from a greater authority. You're supposed to respect each other enough to not prey on your own kind.
Another take is looking at crimes like CSA. The state punishes it when it is brought to their attention, but that does not absolve the community from necessarily participating in its policing ahead of that-- the community are the ones best positioned to detect, intervene, and enforce social norms around it in the first place.
This moral argument may be applicable to individual people, but this is yet another example that companies under the current system (and, by extension, their governing bodies) only have one goal: maximizing profits.
In the abscence of fear of punishment by a more powerful actor, if the common good gets in the way of profits, the latter will always prevail.
More importantly, it makes them irreplaceable since competing products from smaller companies simply cannot afford policing at such level while the bad actors are running around unpunished.
So long as the people believe that their only choice is "which king will rule over us?", their society will remain a monarchy.
AGs and DAs don't care about small-scale scams and ripoffs and cheats, generally aren't equipped to investigate them, and if the party committing fraud is in another country are likely to throw up their hands and say "not in my jurisdiction."
This will stop with tough legislation and penalties that force Google to give up a percentage of its annual revenue. It will never happen in the United States.
If you try to sell property on your own, you'll get many unsolicited offers from real estate agents, sometimes claiming they already have a buyer and sometimes this is even true.