More small business owners are falling prey to online "predatory" lenders offering them quick cash. Some business owners are in such extreme financial strife that they have been forced to sell their family home.
I never said it was similar to phishing. Read my comment again. I was clearly referring to the impact of stigmatisation on the victim. Phishing and phone scam victims also often feel an extreme burden of guilt because they believe they acted stupidly in blindly trusting a link or a person who cold called them. Reinforcing this guilt by telling them “yes you are stupid and you fucked up” doesn’t help them. It has the exact opposite effect.
I don’t know why you keep trying to frame this as “they started their business and instantly made a mistake because they can’t/didn’t read”. The article is about small business owners being taken advantage during periods of severe financial stress. We are not discussing happy people fucking up due to some innate character flaw. We are talking about people who are suffering from extreme stress and making irrational decisions as a result. Lecturing them as if they didn’t sign these contracts as an absolute last resort, in exceptional circumstances is not helpful in any way.
We are not discussing happy people fucking up due to some innate character flaw. We are talking about people
No, we are not talking about people at all. We are talking about companies. Again, if we were talking about people, I would agree with you 100%, but we’re not. This is one company making a contract with a different company. Companies are legally distinct from people for very good reasons, and this is one of them.
Of course, there are reallife human behind those companies. And if those people had made these choices as individual people, they would in fact be protected under the law. But they chose NOT to be protected under those laws so they could operate as a company with the ups and down that entails. They voluntarily took this risk to get the benefits of running a company, and now they are crying that they didn’t know any better. It doesn’t work like that, if you don’t want to be treated as a company, don’t be one. You don’t get to have all the advantages on one hand, and none of the disadvantages on the other.
I want to re-emphasize this: You can absolutely do this work as a private individual. Mia Li, the window-frame importor from the article could have done all her business as a private individual, but she obviously didn’t, probably because that comes with some big downsides in taxes. She voluntarily started a company, chosing the waive the very protections she had as a private person, in order to get benefits in the form of tax advantages and other things. And now that she suffers the downsides from her own choises (that choice of starting a business, that she made well before covid), she’s upset that she’s not shielded from the consequences of her actions like a regular consumer would be.
I don’t feel sorry for people when they their voluntary, intentionally risky, actions have consequences. When you chose to forego risk-mitigation in order to recieve financial benefits, you’re making a choice. If that goes wrong, you literally only have yourself to blame.
Cool, but wouldn’t it be better if scummy practices weren’t allowed at all? That’s the society I’d rather live in, not the one where we rag on people for being “stupid”. Company or not, there’s simply not enough general education on running a business and I feel that this is really a barrier for those who want to run a business and live the capitalist dream. i.e. she could probably have operated as an individual, but maybe didn’t know any better or maybe she can’t because of some other arrangements. I think it’s hard to say they should know when they might not have the money or access to education, though I haven’t read the article myself so who knows, but I’m just considering the general case here.
If you assume incompetence as the default, as with most consumer protection, then it becomes basically impossible to deal business to business. Can a company lie to a consumer, and then claim they simply don’t know or didn’t understand? If your industry has a higher profit margin than mine, can I sue you for being scummy?
The basis of consumer protection is that consumer can’t be expected to be experts in everything. The basis of business law is that businesses know what they’re doing in their field. If you don’t, you’re doing it wrong.
I don’t feel sorry for people when they their voluntary, intentionally risky, actions have consequences. When you chose to forego risk-mitigation in order to recieve financial benefits, you’re making a choice. If that goes wrong, you literally only have yourself to blame.
What happened to “we’re not talking about people”…?
Would you prefer to argue the semantics, or the actual point?
Someone intentionally, knowingly, drops their legal projections to increase their personal benefit. They stop acting as an individual legally, and start acting as a company. And then the consequences of that action happen.
What is your “actual point”? You keep referring to companies and telling me I’m not allowed to discuss the impact on individuals, despite the article, my original comment and every comment I’ve made since being focused on individuals, but then start randomly discussing individuals yourself when it suits you.
This discussion has never been about whether individuals or companies are culpable for their actions. You are either not reading any of my replies or you are just straight up ignoring them because you find the concept of empathy too emotionally challenging to handle. You are increasingly sounding like someone who struggles with emotional self-regulation and copes by finding fault in those around them.
It’s similar with people who fall victim to phishing or phone scams; you are only perpetuating the stigma they feel by reacting like this to their situation
I think this is the full quote the most important part being:
you are only perpetuating the stigma they feel by reacting like this to their situation
They’re not lying, you’re either being disingenuous or an idiot
It’s not a lie. The other commenter was implying that I was comparing the two on culpability and I clearly wasn’t, as I explained in the comment you’ve replied to.
But, of course, you already knew all this and are simply trying the lazy gotcha route because you are unwilling or unable to actually discuss the topic in good faith.
I never said it was similar to phishing. Read my comment again. I was clearly referring to the impact of stigmatisation on the victim. Phishing and phone scam victims also often feel an extreme burden of guilt because they believe they acted stupidly in blindly trusting a link or a person who cold called them. Reinforcing this guilt by telling them “yes you are stupid and you fucked up” doesn’t help them. It has the exact opposite effect.
I don’t know why you keep trying to frame this as “they started their business and instantly made a mistake because they can’t/didn’t read”. The article is about small business owners being taken advantage during periods of severe financial stress. We are not discussing happy people fucking up due to some innate character flaw. We are talking about people who are suffering from extreme stress and making irrational decisions as a result. Lecturing them as if they didn’t sign these contracts as an absolute last resort, in exceptional circumstances is not helpful in any way.
No, we are not talking about people at all. We are talking about companies. Again, if we were talking about people, I would agree with you 100%, but we’re not. This is one company making a contract with a different company. Companies are legally distinct from people for very good reasons, and this is one of them.
Of course, there are reallife human behind those companies. And if those people had made these choices as individual people, they would in fact be protected under the law. But they chose NOT to be protected under those laws so they could operate as a company with the ups and down that entails. They voluntarily took this risk to get the benefits of running a company, and now they are crying that they didn’t know any better. It doesn’t work like that, if you don’t want to be treated as a company, don’t be one. You don’t get to have all the advantages on one hand, and none of the disadvantages on the other.
I want to re-emphasize this: You can absolutely do this work as a private individual. Mia Li, the window-frame importor from the article could have done all her business as a private individual, but she obviously didn’t, probably because that comes with some big downsides in taxes. She voluntarily started a company, chosing the waive the very protections she had as a private person, in order to get benefits in the form of tax advantages and other things. And now that she suffers the downsides from her own choises (that choice of starting a business, that she made well before covid), she’s upset that she’s not shielded from the consequences of her actions like a regular consumer would be.
I don’t feel sorry for people when they their voluntary, intentionally risky, actions have consequences. When you chose to forego risk-mitigation in order to recieve financial benefits, you’re making a choice. If that goes wrong, you literally only have yourself to blame.
Cool, but wouldn’t it be better if scummy practices weren’t allowed at all? That’s the society I’d rather live in, not the one where we rag on people for being “stupid”. Company or not, there’s simply not enough general education on running a business and I feel that this is really a barrier for those who want to run a business and live the capitalist dream. i.e. she could probably have operated as an individual, but maybe didn’t know any better or maybe she can’t because of some other arrangements. I think it’s hard to say they should know when they might not have the money or access to education, though I haven’t read the article myself so who knows, but I’m just considering the general case here.
If you assume incompetence as the default, as with most consumer protection, then it becomes basically impossible to deal business to business. Can a company lie to a consumer, and then claim they simply don’t know or didn’t understand? If your industry has a higher profit margin than mine, can I sue you for being scummy?
The basis of consumer protection is that consumer can’t be expected to be experts in everything. The basis of business law is that businesses know what they’re doing in their field. If you don’t, you’re doing it wrong.
Now you’re just being silly
Good luck preventing all scummy practices.
Not that we shouldn’t try, but to expect them to not exist is naive.
I’m sure we could have legislation made about contracts which are human readable, no “fine print”, not obtusely long using legal jargon
The article is literally about individual people.
What happened to “we’re not talking about people”…?
Would you prefer to argue the semantics, or the actual point?
Someone intentionally, knowingly, drops their legal projections to increase their personal benefit. They stop acting as an individual legally, and start acting as a company. And then the consequences of that action happen.
What is your “actual point”? You keep referring to companies and telling me I’m not allowed to discuss the impact on individuals, despite the article, my original comment and every comment I’ve made since being focused on individuals, but then start randomly discussing individuals yourself when it suits you.
This discussion has never been about whether individuals or companies are culpable for their actions. You are either not reading any of my replies or you are just straight up ignoring them because you find the concept of empathy too emotionally challenging to handle. You are increasingly sounding like someone who struggles with emotional self-regulation and copes by finding fault in those around them.
If you can’t be honest, at least don’t lie
I think this is the full quote the most important part being:
They’re not lying, you’re either being disingenuous or an idiot
It’s not a lie. The other commenter was implying that I was comparing the two on culpability and I clearly wasn’t, as I explained in the comment you’ve replied to.
But, of course, you already knew all this and are simply trying the lazy gotcha route because you are unwilling or unable to actually discuss the topic in good faith.