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Critics To FTC: Why Do You Hate In-App Purchasing Freedom?
jfruh writes The FTC has moved aggressively recently against companies that make it too easy for people — especially kids — to rack up huge charges on purchases within apps. But at a dicussion panel sponsored by free-market think tank TechFreedom, critics pushed back. Joshua Wright, an FTC commissioner who dissented in a recent settlement with Apple, says a 15-minute open purchase window produced "obvious and intuitive consumer benefits" and that the FTC "simply substituted its own judgment for a private firm's decision as to how to design a product to satisfy as many users as possible."
As the arcades closed I thought that never again people would accept coin-op's. :)
But the Smurfberries in all their incarnations and the DLC's on PC clearly shows I was wrong.
When companies take advantage of customer addiction tendencies, it's predatory, and causes long-term suffering, for short-term satisfaction.
Since the companies can't regulate themselves, the government must do it for them.
Coke is without coke these days as well, and that is a good thing (coke causes the brain to become psychopathic over time).
Socialism is democratic worker control of the means of production, you troglodyte. That's all it is. There is less security under socialism than capitalism, because nobody is allowed to rely on invested capital. This minor controversy has absolutely nothing to do with socialism.
All that's going on here is a few rich guys whining that they want ways of taking money from people using a technological loophole - the ease with which a child can use mom's credit card - rather than directly as a result of a contract formed between two adults providing informed consent. If anything, the capitalist position would run contrary to TechFreedom's argument because capitalism strives for informed, rational agents, necessarily treating children as a special case. To be clear, children usually cannot form contracts, but nobody owns children, therefore they cannot be entirely responsible for their actions.This reflects their status as developing humans.
So get off your high horse and stop worrying that the sky is falling. Every dull member of every new generation speaks like the "golden days" have come to an end because xyz minor thing that they don't really understand means the end of the world.
A 15 minute refund period would be delicious. It would completely destroy the IAP marketplace. I'd be able to again buy high quality games for $5-15 and not be faced with game designers who focus on nickel-and-dime ripping me off. They'd actually have to work on making the game fun enough for me to be willing to pay for the non-trial version. Wolfenstein 3D and later Doom did this well with shareware trial versions. Similarly a whole bunch of games from that era: Jill of the Jungle, Commander Keen, etc.
"Disable In App Purchases" should be a checkbox in the settings for the App Market and it should simply render invisible any games that incorporate In App Purchases, just the way games for the Tablet don't appear in the Google Play market when I open the Google Play app on my cellphone.
Commerce is not your "private life". It is the transfer of "property", something created by government fiat and enforced by government guns. And it in most cases is it the transfer of "property" to or from a corporation, an entity created by government fiat.
If it doesn't directly involve government issued land and resource deeds (the root of all physical property), copyright and patents and trademarks (the root of all so-called "intellectual property"), or corporate charters, and doesn't involve government-enforced contracts, then you can maybe complain about government interference in your "private life".
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
What do you mean by "brand of socialist"? Are you trying to re-define "socialist" as a pejorative rather than a label for a specific system? "Anything which doesn't agree with a particular sort of free market system," perhaps? I understand that "socialist" is sometimes used in the United States like "terrorist" - the latter is a person who inflicts terror on civilians to achieve a political aim, but is commonly re-"branded" to mean "anyone I'm fighting against".
I am not judging socialism - I am merely telling you how its "founding fathers", supporting Parties and every political text identify it. Whether it succeeds is another matter. OK, we could listen to how hypocritical dictator Stalin defines communism, and we could also listen to how he defines capitalism... what is your point? Tell me what you're for. IOW, tell me what you references you accept in your understanding of the definition of "socialism". And, to be transparent, I'm not asking about whether it works, but testing your intellectual integrity.
Socialism isn't a system, it's a class of systems. It encompasses everything from social democratic state on Scandinavia to Marxist-Leninist states.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
What the fuck are these so-called "benefits" of a "15 minute open purchase window" that are so obvious and intuitive?
Forget about "the children". Who is so badly damaged as a person that they feel that it's currently just too hard to buy stuff online?
You know, I'm starting to think those kooks over at Adbusters might be on to something. We are one fucked-up society, and it looks like the marketing/industrial complex is in large part to blame.
You are welcome on my lawn.
>> Because its their job to hate people who take advantage of others in matters of trade?
> Very true. A wholly free market is actually quite toxic, as a certain Adam Smith noted. Especially when it's dishonest.
Yes. Yes, yes, yes! Exactly this.
the FTC "simply substituted its own judgment for a private firm's decision as to how to design a product to satisfy as many users as possible."
Because that is what we pay them to do. And there is a very good reason; because private firms measure customer satisfaction through the lens of maximization of profit (fairly short run profit in the case of apps), and the FTC measures it through imperfect objective analysis of the rational self-interest and informedness of the transaction participants. Gee, here's a surprise: Those two measures don't always agree, and sometimes, when they are far enough out of whack, it actually increases GDP in the long run if you limit the freedom of people to engage in inefficienty transactions.
A really good example of such potentially inefficient transactions is children, who do not understand how much time and effort it costs to acquire money, are in the throes of video game passion and a screen pops up saying, "Win More, Only $3.99! Buy Now!"
Joshua Wright, an FTC commissioner who dissented...
A market filled with efficient transactions increases GDP in the long run relative to a market with less efficient transactions. So, tell me, Joshua Wright; do you hate the economy? Do you want a lower GDP? Do you want our corporations to lose money? Do want our wealthiest stockholders to have to buy slightly smaller Gulfstreams? Answer me, Mr. Wright: Do you hate America?
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