15,251 karma · joined April 5, 2014
The virtual world has opened up new channels for fraud and it seems government is just way behind on this. Almost to the level that some institutional trust is starting to break down (not to be too exaggerated about it though). (see pandemic relief funds)
The only thing keeping most points-accumulating customers from being angered about this (while there is a hardcore group of fans who track it) is that no airline is required to publish the history of inflation/devaluation. And the airlines hide it behind having changed from actual static charts showing what an airline mile is worth, to now floating dynamic pricing, which completely obscures what has happened. Sell tons of miles dirt cheap to credit card companies, and devalue the miles when it comes time to redeem them.
Of course, that is their right, and this is not a state currency, and these are "bonuses", not some entitlement. But people should justly have lowered their faith in it from the beginning. Although you might say the same thing about lotteries -- people are participating in those voluntarily, yet those are regulated and have restrictions on what they can and can't do.
But anyway, now people just discover that the 200,000 miles they'd been working towards for years no longer even buys the ticket(s) they thought it would.
It has made me, personally, seriously lower my loyalty or pursuit of loyalty for any future promised benefits.
(and an end note/minor side story, this applies not just to points/miles but also elite status -- the perks you get for loyalty, such as better seats during flights, lounges, check-in, etc. Airlines have devalued these just as well, by letting the ranks of "elite" customers swell through credit card spending qualification, promotions, etc, and then devaluing the benefits at the tiers of qualification. They're glad to shovel people in with promises which then turn out to be not worth the benefits you thought. Or they add a secret higher tier that you didn't know about.)
You and me both, buddy!
Having been to Japan now and having seen the amount of gift wrapping and boxes and packaging of little food items and treats, I wonder if this simple social rule actually drives quite a notable amount of consumer spending and economic activity in the country!
I'm guessing not (it's already wrapped in the box) and I imagine it can't be accessed by software alone. Like, blown fuses.
Without even realizing it for a while, I started to mistake a video that basically stated someone's collected assertions/opinions/variously supported research with pseudo documentary journalism because of the huge number of video clips being played as the person spoke.
Or these amount of clips are just needed to hold someone's attention if the person making the video is only doing a voiceover? I guess otherwise, nothing distinguishes the video from a podcast.
Factors:
People's labor is no longer so cheap to build stuff, they have more qualifications and alternatives to their labor and they want to be paid more.
Government contracting becomes influenced by political / additional considerations.
The projects get more and more complex and are no longer decided by just a few responsible people but dispersed among multiple agencies each with requirements.
Regulations and standards increase.
There are more people to insert their hands into the revenue streams and extract some value.
Property now is worth something and has to be bought off.
It goes on and on. I don't know if there are any good examples of where an advanced economy was able to avoid this increasing cost of basic infrastructure building, although of course, some countries manage to do it without the same levels of cost as the USA for example.
As soon as you achieve some gain in energy efficiency of anything, people find new ways to use even more energy. Make lights more energy efficient and LED-powered, and they put up more lights. Lower the cost of fuel or electricity, and they use even more. Make a car less polluting and powered by batteries, they make it even heavier and more energy consuming.
If they had anticipated CO2 (and yes, I agree it was known by some well before this time), they should have / would have made it much more specific to include that kind of slow, "who is responsible" kind of harm.
(In my opinion) This historic law/provision is not specific enough (or it does not create a novel enough kind of cause of action) for the climate change type of problem, to be enforceable as it gets tested up the judicial chain. (see my other comment in this story)
Because the major barrier I see is, with the climate change problem in general, no one is able to concretely and incrementally connect someone's (tiny) polluting action to actual harm to someone far down the line. (for legal liability purposes -- not saying the link doesn't exist in scientific proof)
Let me phrase it this way. For someone to have an actionable legal cause, doesn't it require that the person/entity causing some claimed harm have a particularized, concrete, connected relationship to the harm? And that their cessation of the claimed causative action would remedy the issue? <--- this is the important thing
The kids claim that <xyz> climate detrimental action is causing them harm. In most cases (some gas guzzling vehicle, coal burning plant) etc. the thing they claim is harming them, even if it were to be completely shut down, would not solve the climate problem. They would still be experiencing the harm.
So how would a law be enforceable if anyone could be sued for something that minutely adds to climate change, and their stopping their activity would produce no measurable effect on the claimant's outcome? Heck, the kids' own existence could be said to be linked to climate change.
Or, how about this -- wind farms could be sued for minutely adding to the environment / climate change problem. Or big box retail stores for causing traffic and wasteful packaging. The list could go on and on. We have opened a can of worms like if you said that denial of "the pursuit of happiness" is something that people can sue over.
What legal principle is being promulgated here? I suspect this will be subject to significant review if more cases accumulate.
Have you talked to any kind of building work contractor, insurance company, etc. lately? They've all jacked up their prices just because their supply prices touched a certain level and now they have to plan for it. And to be sure, some of them are using the cover of inflation to test how willing people are to pay more.
Inflation really is a vicious cycle. And I don't think we've in recent memory seen prices actually decrease after an inflationary cycle. Do things pegged with CPI even allow for negative inflation?
Several years ago I got a new passport, and thought to use that to check in online for an intl flight. The app had my old passport and would have worked fine, but puked on scanning the new passport, and suddenly I was not / could not be checked in.
I started going to the airport, to arrive at my usual 1 hr before, but got delayed by traffic. Only by miracle of begging supervisor to reopen check in did they allow me to do it.
I should've just went with the old passport in the record that worked, and changed it out at the gate/checkin counter when at the airport.
More than just the slowness of development or lack of housing that results -- the amount of red tape, approvals, and permits (for honestly ridiculous aspects of aesthetic considerations) that a city imposes, the more it discriminates against middle income / low income people.
What you find in our most liberal cities is that the more that entrenched old populations who got there first want to keep the city to be a certain character by making the permitting process difficult, the more it is that only rich people can afford to get through those processes.
Have you ever noticed that fancy new condos or rich people's houses are able to be built, while the average homeowner throws up his/her hands at the amount of permits and hearing necessary to get a simple remodeling done? It's really discrimination against anyone but the rich, who have the money to hire people who can navigate this system that's been created. I once randomly sat in a building permit hearing where the committee members seemed to out of obligation, require certain changes to any application that came along just to seem to be doing their jobs. The color of a door, the location of a chimney. Absolutely ridiculous.
Maybe the city has good intentions, but like so many things left on unintended autopilot, it has become a conservative force. The family of 4 who could either get much more out of their house in living space, upgrade their life, or at least sell it for more, are forced to give up those plans when confronted with the ridiculous permitting/approvals process.
So you end up with cities where only the rich can afford to apply for a permit and succeed at it.
We would do well to confront what we've incentivized, and whether they're living up to our claimed values.
The very fact that we have money that can appear to be yours initially, but then removed from your account if a check is reversed or disputed is costing people in time and $, and benefitting fraudsters. (advance fee fraud, Zelle "mistakes", and similar). 3 day clearing times that give people an opportunity to be scammed.
Although, irreversible + instant payments may open some new types of problems for people, I could totally see that. But people will need to learn how to deal with this more rational system. Other countries are decades ahead of us in that you are the one who has to initiate payments from your account, and only you can do that, and payments are instant and settled.
Only phones activated in the UK or with UK set as the activating country have to follow the rule? Only if there's a SIM card? What about iPods or MacBooks? What if you bring a US phone to the UK, does it have to magically detect and suddenly allow backdoors?
If you leave the UK with your UK phone, is it allowed to be encrypted then, or the UK wants the ability no matter where you go?
https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
"Mother Earth, Mother Board" (stories about laying undersea cable and the history of wiring the Earth up"
(or unpaywalled: https://archive.is/ICkHe)