Hacker News Reader

Comment by carlosjobim | Hacker News Reader

You are seriously arguing that because businesses have to give customers what they want that these businesses are oppressed? I'm not going to bite, because there is a very clear difference between doing something because somebody else is forcing you to, and doing something out of choice and free will because it benefits you.

You are trying to pervert words and the concept of freedom in a quite uncanny way - for nobody's benefit. Most people and business owners aren't living within a mental prison where they oblige themselves to min-max everything in life and make all decisions according to a fantasy of rationality. Many of them refuse to accept CC payments, even if it might be in their best interest to.

View on HN

> "Many of them refuse to accept CC payments"

No they don't. We're not talking about lemonade stands here.

Business owners don't have a choice. They must use CC processors or else lose their business. That's the point.

You're shoehorning a philosophical definition of freewill into a context where it doesn't apply.

Given that consumers and businesses have "freewill" or "freedom" to make any financial decision, then by your logic there are no bounds a company can possibly transgress.

Why do you think we have anti-trust laws, or consumer protection laws, or the FDA, or have litigated against monopolies in the past, or have the host of many other things which protects consumers from being taken advantaged of?

I have never heard anybody try to make a definition of free will more wrong than what you are making. You are arguing that people don't have free will, because they are obliged to in every situation do what is best for their economic interests. But no such obligation exists in reality. Everybody has the freedom to make decisions that divert from their economic interests or from their interests in general. Almost all humans make such decisions every day.

You're damn right that a business owner will lose his sales and his profits if he doesn't give customers what they want. Which usually includes paying by card. Your option would be to take away the options and freedom from customers to decide where and how they spend their money, which has been tried already and became a total failure called the Soviet Union. But I guess hackers are much more enlightened and will succeed where every one else failed...

You're damn right about lemonade stands also. A business whose owners refuse to give customers what they want usually doesn't grow much, and stays small. Then they cry that they are oppressed by card processors or by middlemen, and only on HN will you find people who actually take them seriously.

Only in a tyrannical world should business owners have a right to make a profit without a duty to tend to their customers needs.

You're missing the point completely, not just of this exchange, but of the entire thread. It's not about the relationship between businesses and customers. It's about an entrenched system which parasitically drains the consumer, benefiting the few at the cost of the many - and the health of the economy (read: society) as a whole, and why this system persists because it's interlocked, not because it's fair or beneficial. Read some of the other responses to understand.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com