deceptive products and practices

If a guy owes you $50 and you never see him again, it's worth it.

Unknown

If a company sells me a defective product, and I never buy from them again: it's worth it to me, to know that I reduce my chances of being ripped off; but it's not worth it to the company, which loses business, especially if I tell everybody I know about my experience and advise them to shop elsewhere.

If a company makes a defective product, subsequently discovers the error, and, in order to minimize its loss, deeply discounts the defective product, selling it at a price where people believe they're getting a great bargain and only discover much later that they were ripped off by poor quality, it's not worth it to either the customer or company, for the above reasons.

If companies routinely engage in these deceptive practices, valuing profits above customer satisfaction, we call it American corporate capitalism.

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Parkinson's Law

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."

Parkinson's Law

There is little necessity any more that I ever complete any work.
And I have all the time I need to complete any work I choose to do.
Therefore, I should seldom get anything done. And yet I do.
So there's something not quite accurate about that law.

It seems to apply only to corporate work by uninterested employees and doesn't take into account the motivation to get something done for its own sake or for your own sake. Which perhaps reveals the true nature of corporate work.

Oh, I know what the corporate defense against this argument would be: "Good employees don't feel this way; they always work to the company's best interest." But corporate (and government and, more generally, social) definitions often turn logic around backwards, converting black into white, or, if necessary, various shades of gray. Don't fall for it.

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Comcast: Worst. Company. Ever.

Comcast has always been known for its lousy customer service. But the company's plans to turn the Internet into something that looks like cable TV should get you hopping mad.

Craig Aaron, In These Times

This isn't me saying this. Just thought I'd point that out. I'm not the only one who sees the "conspiracy". They are out to "get" us. Don't let them dupe you into believing they are not. They'll do everything they know how to convince you that you are merely being (unreasonably) paranoid and that they are merely acting to better enable the American way of life; but their real purpose is to increase their stranglehold over as much of the economy as possible [to which end they lobby (i.e., bribe) congress], the net result of which is to take as much power (money) as possible out of your pockets. The primary way that they are doing it these days is by rendering ineffective the anti-trust legislation that real patriots put in place half a century or so ago. In this fiasco, the Bush-Cheney machine has been of immense value to them.

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sports addiction

So, like, when did sports take over the nation?
You turn your back for just a few years and...

Professional sports, I realize, has been popular for a long, long time;
but it seems like, lately, it's gotten ridiculous.

We're a nation of sports addicts, which would be okay if we were participating, exercise being good for us and all. But we're addicted to watching--while drinking alcohol and filling our faces with unhealthy foodstuffs.

And we've [okay, I'm going to stop using the 1st person plural here, because I am definitely not a party to this madness] vested huge amounts of cash and resources into the effort, and not only at the corporate level, which is somewhat understandable, given the fact that the country is hardcore corporate capitalist.

I disavow all of it. It's insanity disguised as normal social engagement.
The country has gone over the top.

[This diatribe has been prompted by a daily Pittsburgh Yahoo! e-mail alert that I get that is supposed to report news but is filled with sports news with an occasional actual news items included (maybe); so, maybe this is more of a Yahoo! problem than a national one. Nah.]

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groundswell

While I was online tonight, because it just happened to pop into my head, I did a Google search on "fuck Comcast" to see what I would get. Apparently, there are a lot of people who feel the way I do about the company. With this kind of groundswell, how do they stay in business? Obviously, like Netflix, through dishonesty, by lying in their tv ads about how great they are and what they will do for you that they will not in fact do. Promises unkept.

On the other hand, it occurs to me that I could probably get similar results by Googling "Fuck [insert the name of any corporation here]." It's not Comcast specifically, but corporations in general that suck.

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the dark side of society

A sincere and well-intentioned lady, Kathleen Seidel, the mother of an autistic child, has been subpoenaed by a lawyer working for the Rev. Lisa Sykes, who recently won her suit against the government, claiming that vaccines caused her child's autism. So, now she's got her attorney canvassing the net and sending out what amounts to subpoena-bullying to anyone and everyone who has even the slightest cyber-connection to the case; that is, if you happen to have said the wrong thing, look out, they may be after you.

It would be bad enough if this woman "of God" were simply pursuing a libel ruling; but, apparently, she has gone much further than that: she (or rather her lawyer) is attempting to intimidate legitimate criticism and opinion in order to suppress it. It's the same tactic that the government (FBI, et al.) uses when people on the net get too many hits and become a nuisance when criticizing...whomever, whatever influential politician or bureaucrat happens to be offended at that moment.

Free speech? Sure, you got it. But don't you dare to try to exercise it effectively. Seidel is a lawyer herself, so she knows how to defend herself, and does so effectively. Not so, most of us. We plod along in relative anonymity and seem to do just fine; but if we manage to gain a bit of an audience, then someone, somewhere is going to take exception, and some people being what they are, incapable of accepting others' opinions as being as legitimate as their own, will go out of their way to shout you down or, failing that, rally quasi-legal forces against you. This is the dark side of society, the force that demands that you join the consensus, or else.

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Comcast

Comcast is undoubtedly one of the worst corporate offenders of individual rights. Its activities re net neutrality and web traffic throttling alone are enough to dishonor it.

If you subscribe to a Comcast service, change to a competitor. If you work for Comcast, quit; or, better yet, act internally to sabotage its business.

[But be smart about it. Don't take any unnecessary chances. And never tell anyone what you're doing. The only true secret is the one you tell to no one. Revealing your anti-corporate agenda is a sure way to get caught, lose your job, and perhaps even get prosecuted and sent to jail.]

This is a good strategy to use against any corporation that acts to deprive individuals of their inherent right to live free of corporate influence.

Corporations are the antithesis of individual freedom.
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