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It's not a crime if we do it with an app

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Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#541

Post by JumpCrisscross »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #536
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we would remove the requirement of a crime being intentional for corporations You still have the problem of punishing diffuse guilt. The correct answer is fines. Massive fines, potentially to the point of bankruptcy. We don't like to do that, however, because corporations have many stakeholders who may not deserve punishment, e.g. employees.

I agree the correct answer is fines, but I disagree that the government should concern itself with whether or not the company decides to take it out on employees who don't deserve it. It's up to the company to decide how it should be run. As long as the government disincentivizes the actions by making the fines high enough, that is good enough.

> I disagree that the government should concern itself with whether or not the company decides to take it out on employees who don't deserve it

Those employees disagree with you and they vote. Every district has large employers whose employees would, as a voting bloc, flip a primary or even general election.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#542

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dudeofea wrote: post #513
ajmurmann wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But the US has consistently been far too passive and accepts greedy companies far too readily." All companies are greedy. That's the reason for existence. Your point that monopolies and oligopolies need to be crushed is very valid though. I wish more mergers were rejected in the first place. Regulating prices is a recipe for disaster though.

Henry Ford tried not to be greedy all the time, then he was sued, and now all corporations are required to be greedy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co .

That's not really how that works. It's more along the lines of saying "we're doing this good thing because I want to and I have majority control so I don't have to care about the other shareholders" vs. saying "we're doing this good thing because it's good PR that may increase sales or help placate regulators" even though the thing you're doing is the exact same thing.

There are a lot of rules whose de facto consequence is to prohibit describing the true reason someone is doing something instead of actually prohibiting them from doing it.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#543

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ogleopoly wrote: post #483
olalonde wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to keep a free market from collapsing into one of the natural end states What is that natural end state? Natural monopolies are exceedingly rare, almost all monopolies are the result of government intervention .

[flagged]

1) Government imposes regulatory barriers to entry, inhibiting new businesses from entering the market

2) Incumbents buy each other and raise prices

If you only had the second one then as soon as the incumbents tried to raise prices, new businesses would want a piece of it and enter the market, causing prices to fall until it was no longer profitable to enter the market.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#544

Post by datavirtue »

wat10000 wrote: post #303
mminer237 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not actually true. Wage theft is maybe third: https://truthnotoutrage.com/2023/12/05/retail-theft-dwarfs-w... By all indicia, shoplifting is a much bigger problem. I know this myth and wage theft in general are really popular on social media. I think its lacking of representation in traditional media and prosecution is a mix of how much more clear-cut shoplifting is and just the victims report it more.

Thanks. I suppose the “more than all others combined” would be “except shoplifting,” which is a big “except.” I still maintain that wage theft is covered and enforced far less than it should be given the scale, precisely because of who the victims and perpetrators are. Your link lays it out nicely: “ While wage theft is a horrible crime against workers, retail theft also directly causes higher costs for consumers and…

Wage theft always starts with labor law compliance. They didn't take the required break on their shift...better adjust the hours to be compliant. Now it's normalized and rationalized. Each employee has to make a stink to address the theft and are dismissed without a second thought. I used to work blue collar service industry and saw this happen in nearly every company where I worked. There is no union or personal agency. The individual worker is discarded at the first sign of legal friction.

I worked a job where every person worked 63 hours a week standard at $7.50 an hour. We would have a lunch break where one person would go fetch lunch and bring it back each day. We would all meet in the break room and scarf down our food in a few minutes and get back on the floor. We literally clocked this on time cards. We might take up to fifteen minutes to eat but accounting would adjust it to 30 minutes every time. No consultation, warnings or notices of any kind. The timecard was gone at the end of each week so you had no record of your actual punches.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#545

Post by viraptor »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #531
viraptor wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one person gets 40 hours and one person gets 10 instead of each person getting 25 hours If these are the upfront conditions, why is that an issue? But the main issue you're getting closer and closer to is: uber's model doesn't seem to be profitable if they have to pay and employ with reasonable conditions. They don't have to be profitable though. We really can let them fail. The reasonable cities can then provide s…

> If these are the upfront conditions, why is that an issue? Because they might have both preferred 25 hours with flexibility to a forced choice between 40 inflexible hours or 10 flexible ones. > uber's model doesn't seem to be profitable if they have to pay and employ with reasonable conditions. Uber is an app. Their primary cost is paying drivers. They're not going to fail because you imposed this inflexibility on…

> both preferred 25 hours with flexibility

That's not an option though. The option uber gives is "maybe 25, maybe not, you'll find out on the day".

That's still "how do we keep uber in business". There are alternatives like good quality overprovisioned public transport which can take most of those customers. It can also deal with peak situations like events.

It's a sunk cost fallacy to think of uber as some kind of last resort employer that can ignore the rules.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#546

Post by arcbyte »

mikelitoris wrote: post #440
arcbyte wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most crimes done by individuals are intentional. That is most often not the case with corporations. Intentionality is an important requirement in most crimes. That doest mean that there isn't plenty of room for more centralized civil protections against negligence and recklessness.

This is a bullshit argument that people in charge of these companies make. How do you know the "thief" that stole merchandise from a store wasn't going to come back to pay for it in an hour? You don't... you just assume the worst, which should be the case for corporations.

It's not a bullshit argument, it is a battle tested argument with a long history.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#547

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

constantcrying wrote: post #103

What a terrible article. The title and the first paragraph talk about how new business models are circumventing existing laws, which seems fair enough and actually quite an interesting subject. Then, there is a switch to the most traditional of businesses with the most traditional business models. Who, the author argues, are engaging in price gauging. In the second paragraph he claims that apps cause this inflation (…

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/methinks+thou+dost+prot...

More on Potatotrac:

https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/byprmmxmwve/...

https://ia800109.us.archive.org/34/items/gov.uscourts.ilnd.4...

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#548

Post by arcbyte »

cycomanic wrote: post #421
arcbyte wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most crimes done by individuals are intentional. That is most often not the case with corporations. Intentionality is an important requirement in most crimes. That doest mean that there isn't plenty of room for more centralized civil protections against negligence and recklessness.

That's a big assertion to make without any evidence. There's a lot of individual crime which is not intentional (e.g. driving related) and there is a lot of corporate crime where someone clearly made a decision. In particular corporations employ lawyers so they have people qualified to decide if a crime is likely being committed.

Interestingly, driving infractions are mostly noncriminal.

Corporations are giant responsibility diffusion machines and more often than not they stumble into illegal activity rather than internally commit to it. Hence, they are not acting intentionally. Also relevant is my assertion that this bumbling illegal behavior also needs better enforcement - it's just civil in nature and not criminal.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#550

Post by bmitc »

gruez wrote: post #157
ryandrake wrote: post #17

More like "It's not a crime if a corporation does it." The US treats corporations with kid gloves. They get away with so much, and in those rare cases where a regulatory body does anything , it's often just a strongly worded letter, a warning, a threat to one day send a strongly worded letter, or, in really rare, extreme cases, a company official gets called in to say a few words in front of Congress. Nobody goes to…

>Contrast that to how individuals get the hammer put down on them by the justice system if they so much as fart in the wrong room. The lesson from the last 50 years should be: If you want to commit a crime and get away with it, do it as a corporation. That's because most crimes "individuals" do are straightforwardly illegal and easy to prosecute, whereas the "crime if a corporation does it" are not. It's not any diff…

> That's because most crimes "individuals" do are straightforwardly illegal and easy to prosecute, whereas the "crime if a corporation does it" are not.

That's part of the point and problem because it is by design. Rich people and corporations like treating their problems as so complex as to be completely intractable. "How do you tax me when I don't have income?!" "How can I be responsible for a system of decisions?!" Etc. Rich people and corporations want nothing but upsides, and they have designed the system to work this way.

A great example of this is Steve Cohen, who got away with insider trading for years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1szayJV505M. You're telling me that a small business owner whose direct reports repeatedly commit and are convicted of fraud would just be able to walk away? Yea, right. In Cohen's case, he just walked away and bought a sports team.

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