There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

Why does the USA have so few legal protections for ordinary people, and how can we change that?

I’m just a regular person making about $70K a year in a big city, and I’ve recently felt incredibly powerless dealing with private companies. For instance, my landlord’s auto-pay system had a glitch that excluded my pet rent and water bill. I ended up with over $1,000 in late fees. Despite hours on the phone, it turns out their system doesn’t really do auto-pay and requires a fixed amount instead of covering the full rent. It feels like a scam, and my options are to pay the fees or potentially spend a fortune on legal action.

Another frustrating experience was trying to cancel my pest control service. I had to endure a 40-minute call followed by 35 minutes of arguing, just to finally cancel. There’s no online cancellation option, and the process felt like a timeshare sales pitch.

Why do ordinary people seem so unprotected against these shady practices, and how can we change this? How does one person even start to address these issues?

tiredofsametab ,

Did you think about it until it happened to you? There's a huge lack of empathy and thought in general (I would argue that, as communities, this increased as social media became more prevalent and in-person third places shrank). Even then, if there is a concerned group, they still have to fight all those other people who are not concerned because they don't think it will affect them or are possibly mildly inconvenienced by it. I think addressing that would help. Also, writing to your elected officials and voting in all elections.

NauticalNoodle ,

Businesses have more money than individual citizens. You will get what you want from the U.S. government and local government when we get money out of politics -Full-stop.

Cryophilia ,

You have basically two options.

  1. vote for Democrats, and make sure your Democrat representatives know that you care a lot about consumer protections
  2. make a shit ton of money so you can fight these companies on more even footing
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA ,
@HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world avatar

Blood

kittenzrulz123 ,

Most countries have Capitalism but few suffer as badly as post-Regan America (except maybe post-Thatcher UK).

magnetichuman ,
@magnetichuman@fedia.io avatar

In the UK we at least still have most of the residual EU consumer protection law in place, so a lot of this kind of stuff that's common in the US would be illegal here. That said, companies still manage to innovate new ways to screw the consumer all the time.

Sam_Bass ,

Because we ordinary people do not possess extraordinary funds to buy that protection

KillingTimeItself ,

because private companies were never meant to big this big and powerful.

They have so much power because they lobby and control the government, part of the problem is dems being generally unappealing and trying to focus more on less significant social issues rather than doing things like, taking away the rights that big corpos never should’ve had in the first place.

It’s a give and take game, the less regulations you have, the more companies you have and the more capital you have moving through you, the more you have the less regulations you have and the less capital you have moving through you.

RangerJosie ,

I can’t tell you. Because the mods won’t like it.

But it rhymes with Piolence.

weeeeum ,

And Viola Ants

brygphilomena ,

$1000 is likely small claims court. At least where I was, no lawyers are allowed for small claims so the landlord would have to come to deal with it himself or a representative of the payment company.

emerald ,

I think going back in time and video gaming Reagan would be a good start

thelasttoot ,

Video gaming?

linearchaos ,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

You should consider the kind of things that happen in video games.

some_guy ,

I just started listening to a new podcast series called Master Plan that talks about how this happened deliberately and systematically over decades. It followed the Powell Doctrine. You can hear a conversation between the primary host, David Sirota, and Brianna Joy Gray (she’s not one of my favorites, but I tuned in because it was him) on Bad Faith podcast.

capital_sniff ,

Corporations tried out binding arbitration and the people just took it with very little complaining. So why not keep eroding consumer protections or the other rights citizens fought for in the before times?

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

That latter issue is actually being worked on, law wise, right now.

jg1i ,

Explain how!

MedicPigBabySaver ,

nytimes.com/…/us-government-unsubscribe-membershi…

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

The FTC is working on a bill or something to make “one click cancel” required.

Cryophilia ,

Which is an excellent answer to the question, “how do we fix it?” Vote for fucking Democrats!! Democrat administrations enact consumer protections!

chemicalprophet ,

Capitalism.

GiddyGap ,

European countries are also capitalist countries, but they have much better consumer protections and laws. It can be done.

swordgeek ,

Open revolution is about the only avenue left.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •