Ok, but those are seller concerns, not buyer concerns. Buyers pay nothing. And if the seller is ok with those terms, that's his problem. Personally - as an occasional seller - I find paypal's terms and fees acceptable for the convienience they provide. I realize that credit card transactions are expensive. Even non credit card transactions (their directly-out-of-checking payment mechanism) have costs associated with them, you shouldn't expect that to be free either (eventhough it is on non-premier accounts). And I realize they charge more than what it costs them, that's sort of the idea behind a for-profit business.
The only thing I find slightly irritating, is that the fees are exactly the same before Ebay bought Paypal. I would have expect some sort of cost saving from the merge, and some of that possibly passed to the customer (maybe lower listing fees if you use paypal, or vice-versa). But since I was ok with the fees before the mergers, I guess I can't complain too much that they haven't changed after the merger.
My dad, who is 56, has never used a computer (as long as you don't count the 2 hours I tried to convert him to using one of my old laptops - which of course, never happened). He just doesn't need it at all, professionally or personally. I wanted to do email with him so that I can send pictures of my toddler to him every now and then. At the end, it's hard to justify paying monthly ISP fees for that. So, he still doesn't use or need a computer. I just snail mail him a few pics every now and then. And call him on that new-fangled telephone thingy! Who thought you could actually hear somebody's voice long distance... I thought instant messaging was the best one can do.
So to answer your question, yes - it's very believable to me.
Agreed that it was in all likelyhood an exageration, and the agents knew that, and that's why they backed down. But in the article the FBI (which was interviewed) is not backing down from the "Clear and Present Danger" thing, so how do they justify not forcing their way past the librarian? Their statements is not matching up with their action. Yes I know, you're gonna tell me that this is also very much consistent with the FBI. I am just pointing out the obvious I guess.
That's great if this is what happened, but it isn't what happened based on the article. In the article you will see that the FBI was actually interviewed for the story (the librarian wasn't available for comment) and said that there was indeed "Clear and Present Danger", but the agents decided to back down anyway (for some hard to justify nebulous reason).
I agree with another poster that it's most likely an exageration (there really wasn't such thread and that's why they decided to back down) but if to this date the official position of the FBI is that there was indeed that thread, then they have some explaining to do.
But she said the FBI had a right to seize the computers because the agents who went to the Newton library thought Brandeis students, professors, and staff members were in immediate danger.
At the end of the day of course, the librarian was right and the FBI wasn't. But if the standard is "clear and present danger" I am not sure I want my local librarian to make that determination. I think the FBI has a bit more qualification to make that call. They say there was clear and present danger, but then they chose not to do it anyway. Weird. Don't know if I should congratulate them or not for they've done (or in this case, not done).
Right. And not to minimize Sony's fault here, but government users (or most corporate users for that matter) should not be able to install (intentionally or not) software on their own PCs. It's a pretty good bet the NSA and DARPA PCs don't.
Yes, I am seeing variations on that theme where I work as well. Not just on systems, but on databases as well. For example, all in the names of Sarbanes Oxley, they've removed any kind of insert/update/delete rights to data in databases to developer accounts. Nothing but select (and I should feel lucky to have that much).
Like all well-meaning policies, somebody that didn't really know what is going on (in this case the DBA group) went overboard. The problem is: because of Sarbanes Oxley, it's a problem if a developer goes and change financial/accounting type of info directly in the database. Fine. So what do they do? They implement these rules on every database and every table, even databases without any financial/accounting impact whatsoever. So if I was storing application settings in the database, I can't even change those without jumping through tons of hoops. Urgh... Frustrating...
I still disagree. These playstations have a very particular audience, and it isn't mom and pop. In most households, playstation won't even be hooked up to the main TV of the house. Maybe the kid's room. Yes, some people (early twenties video game types) may do what you describe, but that's not the critical mass to push the format wars one way or another.
It's yet to be seen how popular the "Web 2.0" will actual end up being. Everything I've seen so far are just better replacement for existing web application (like a better web mail, a better map interface, some mash ups for other web apps). So far everything has been all rather harmless applications. I don't see everything being replaced by "web 2.0", at least not on the internet.
Now, on an intranet - that's another story. Yes, you can give people dumb terminals. Yes, you can do everything as web apps. Yes, you can remove all the control over the morons. But that's because you have full control over the environment, and the employees don't get a say, and generally they don't care - it's just work.
As far as the current state of things, yes - you're right. Most end users are really better off letting someone else manage their stuff. But we were talking about some utopian future where the network bandwidth is infinite, and the computers are self-defending and healing...
It's not clear that blue-ray in the PS3 will have much of any effect of which standard wins the home theater or computer crowd for that matter. While the PS3 may be able to play movie DVDs, will most people use their PS3 as a DVD movie player? I sincerely doubt it. Let's face it, optical drives in videogame stations could as well be their own proprietary format (like it was with cartridges, back in the days) since these disks don't work in a computer or any other devices. These games are custom designed and compiles for that particular hardware. Their formats don't matter.
I love MS Money too, use it daily. It has the "feature" of uploading all your data to their server so that you can do remote data entry or whatever from their website. I have never allowed MS Money to do that, and the day it becomes a mandatory "feature" is the day I will stop using Money.
I hear you some people will be ok doing this. I am sure you're right, and I am sure some already do in some form now. And I call them all fools.
I am not American. I am also a "dirty european socialist" (Belgian) but I live in the US. The only benefit for leasing in the US, as far as I can tell, is lower monthly payments (versus a car loan to own one). But:
There is nothing tax deductible about it (but neither are the interests on the car loan though, so that's a wash)
You are limited in the number of miles/km per year your can drive it, you have to pay for every mile over the limit (a big problem in the US. BIG country, no public transportation - driving 20 minutes to do groceries is quite common).
You can't modify the car in any way (may or may not be an issue for some people).
You have to pay for every little damage when you turn it in at the end of the lease, including what most reasonable people would call normal wear and tear (like a few scratches, stained carpet, etc). Between the miles and this, in many cases this can be a lot of money (thousands of dollars).
You own nothing at the end of the day. Yes, car depreciate in value, but they still HAVE value. A lease car has none (to the person that pays the lease).
You must pay for full coverage on your car insurance (much higher premiums). You can go for minimal coverage on a car you own (one caveat: you must have full coverage for a car you own while you still owe the bank money on it).
As far as public transportation, I am all for it (although they go on strike way too often in Europe) but it's just not very practical in the US other than in the big metropolis (like New York). This country is too big, and too spread-out. The infrastructure investement would be significantly higher than in Europe where things are more tightly packed together.
But with ubiquitous high speed connections of the future only a fool would actually want to own and maintain his own computer.
I couldn't disagree more. I would say only a fool would want to have their computer hosted somewhere else. Many people are putting a lot of very personal, very sensitive data on their computer including their entire financial life (with tools like MS Money for example). I wouldn't trust a third party with any of this stuff (just last week, my mortgage company sent me a letter to tell me they lost a tape with all my personal info - SS# and all). No to mantion you're now an hostage of the hosting company. You paid your hosting bill late? You can't get to your virtual computer and its data until you pay the $50 reconnection fee.
I understand that many computer users are morons and are unable to keep their PCs free of viruses, trojans, keystroke loggers and those people are very much exposed. Well, I would argue that the solution is better software, and better hardware - not having your PC hosted somewhere lese by some third party.
His comment is correct, although performance issues in both Java and.Net are overblown. C# compiles into bytecode (or whatever MS calls it) and the.Net framework compiles that into machine code and runs it. Same exact concept as Java. There is a performance tradoff to this of course, but the.Net framework mitigates it by caching the generated machine code.
As far as C++, as a matter of fact I believe Microsoft does the exact same thing with their newest flavor of C++, with the option to still generate machine code (no such option for C# and VB.net).
Many business do in fact move to states with lower sales taxes as a sole reason.
No, not really. There really are two groups of businesses - the ones that need to be close to their customers (like brick and mortar retail stores), they will go where there is a customer base, regardless of sales taxes. Other businesses that are not tied to a local customer base (like much of manufacturing for example) might move to locations (or even countries) with lower property taxes, gross receipt taxes, or other business/corporate income taxes. But since sales taxes are not a tax on them, it's really hardly a factor at all. You hear about THOSE kinds of tax related moves all the time.
Wrong. I urge you to review the powers and limits of the federal government in The Constitution. You are urged to review Sections 8-10 that outline just how few rights the federal government has over states and state commerce.
I am quite familiar with the constitution, thank you. This is interstate commerce we're talking about. Not state commerce. It's the feds juridiction.
I read your post (you sound a little bitter, fyi). I don't remember saying that sales taxes (or lack of) is the only factor that makes or breaks a business, or even the main one for that matter. Just one of many. But it's an "unfairness" created by the government (one of many), and therefore that much more stinging. So Amazon pushed you out of business due to their size and their pricing power. Now imagine that they were able to sell everything for 7% even cheaper than they already were, widening the gap even more between their prices and yours. Would you have cared? Would it have mattered to you?
Actually, it's incredibly FAIR as it is right now. You may have heard of this thing called "competition." You see, competition isn't just the arena for private businesses (online vs brick/morter), but also between states. If one state has no sales tax, then they are competing for more businesses to move to that state and make that the base of their operations.
I think you're confused. Competition between states is not a factor here. Even if ALL the states had the exact same sales tax rate (which would eliminate competition in your scenario) the problem would still be exactly the same. You wouldn't pay taxes on purchases made on the internet, while you would for purchases made locally. Also sales taxes is imposed on the consumer, not on the business (the business collects the tax for the state). So the "base of operation" of the business is not a factor either (it is for other kinds of taxes though).
The only factor here is that consumers could choose to move to states without sales taxes (like New Hampshire). Indeed they can. But presumably they live where they live because they like it, and I don't know of anyone that has even considered moving based on the sales taxes. So I don't think it is much a factor in competition between states either.
First of all, the burden to pay the taxes on out of state purchases is on the tax payer, not the businesses. This legislation would attempt to completely shift the burden onto businesses which is completely unfair.
It's not anymore or anyless unfair than it is for the brick and mortar store. Yes the tax is on the individual, and yes the states rely on the stores to collect the tax for them. Tough. It's the price to do business. Pass the cost to your consumers. That's what the brick and mortars do.
If the existing tax collection methods don't work because "nobody in their right mind" wants to pay for what they inherantly know is an unfair tax
No. It has nothing to do with it being an "unfair" tax. It has all to do with human nature. If the only tax an individual had to pay every year was only $10/year per person, people would still not pay it if they knew they wouldn't get caught (yeah, go ahead and tell me you would, I won't call you a liar. I'll just say you're the exception rather than the rule). People just don't like taxes period. Of course, most reasonably people still want/need a government of some sort. And it has to be funded somehow.
And as a "side note", the Feds have no Constitutional right to interfere in state business (not that that's stopped them from instituting most of their unconstitutional agencies and laws).
The federal government absolutely has the right to regulate (and tax) interstate business. Arguably you could say that what the Feds should do is impose a "federal sales taxes" on interstate commerce and distribute the proceed to the state in one way or another. I could see that point.
Well, government needs revenue, that much we agree on. If the revenue goes down either they have to cut spending or find a way to increase their revenue. Cutting spending is a nice idea, but it usually requires cutting things that the citizens need or want (like student loans programs, which were just cut yesterday) and you can only go so far with that without causing other problems (like poverty, homelessness, crime, etc - or simply not getting re-elected).
So usually increasing the revenue is the way to go. That can be achieved either by increasing the tax rates, imposing new taxes, or closing loopholes on people that previously didn't pay taxes when they should. Increasing taxes or creating new taxes also has nasty side effects (like not getting re-elected). Closing loopholes, however, tends to be politically viable since it's seen as fair. The tax-free nature of internet purchases is such a loophole. I think the government let it slide for many years while the revenue it represented was still small, but it's becoming harder and harder to ignore since it's growing.
There is nothing unfair about this. You'd be taxed the same thing wether you go buy something at the local brick and mortar store, or on the web from a company in another state. What's unfair about that? If something is unfair to begin with, it's the current system. Incredibly unfair to brick and mortar stores.
Right now online shopping is tax free basically because of a juridiction issue, not because it's the right thing to do. Sales taxes are levied by the states, and a state doesn't have any authority to enforce anything outside of its borders. Only the federal government can pass laws that would cross state borders.
As a side note - online shopping isn't technically tax free right now. At least in Pennsylvania you're suppose to mail in the sales taxes for purchases you've made "tax free" on the internet. Of course, nobody in their right mind does that. So from that perspective, it's not even a change at all. Just that the feds are stepping in to enforce it.
There are recourses for the victim. It will take a little time, but he can file a dispute with the credit bureaus. In the scenario you describe I believe he would get cleared.
You probably (still) cannot get thrown in jail for not paying a bill (except maybe a tax bill, not sure about that one). But they can get court orders to recover their owed money from your possessions, or straight at the source: from your paycheck. And on top of that, you may get hit both for your and their court fees if they go that route (and for $12,000, they might). But most company will write off small debts (less than a couple grants or so), stain your credit report for 7 years in the process, and then sell the debt for pennies on the dollar to collection agencies. Those will be a bit more persistent, but may also give up and resell the debt again to another collection agency for even less money.
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Yes, especially I hear he lives in the USA now...
Ok, but those are seller concerns, not buyer concerns. Buyers pay nothing. And if the seller is ok with those terms, that's his problem. Personally - as an occasional seller - I find paypal's terms and fees acceptable for the convienience they provide. I realize that credit card transactions are expensive. Even non credit card transactions (their directly-out-of-checking payment mechanism) have costs associated with them, you shouldn't expect that to be free either (eventhough it is on non-premier accounts). And I realize they charge more than what it costs them, that's sort of the idea behind a for-profit business.
The only thing I find slightly irritating, is that the fees are exactly the same before Ebay bought Paypal. I would have expect some sort of cost saving from the merge, and some of that possibly passed to the customer (maybe lower listing fees if you use paypal, or vice-versa). But since I was ok with the fees before the mergers, I guess I can't complain too much that they haven't changed after the merger.
That's an old classic joke. I've seen it make the email rounds several times...
My dad, who is 56, has never used a computer (as long as you don't count the 2 hours I tried to convert him to using one of my old laptops - which of course, never happened). He just doesn't need it at all, professionally or personally. I wanted to do email with him so that I can send pictures of my toddler to him every now and then. At the end, it's hard to justify paying monthly ISP fees for that. So, he still doesn't use or need a computer. I just snail mail him a few pics every now and then. And call him on that new-fangled telephone thingy! Who thought you could actually hear somebody's voice long distance... I thought instant messaging was the best one can do.
So to answer your question, yes - it's very believable to me.
Agreed that it was in all likelyhood an exageration, and the agents knew that, and that's why they backed down. But in the article the FBI (which was interviewed) is not backing down from the "Clear and Present Danger" thing, so how do they justify not forcing their way past the librarian? Their statements is not matching up with their action. Yes I know, you're gonna tell me that this is also very much consistent with the FBI. I am just pointing out the obvious I guess.
That's great if this is what happened, but it isn't what happened based on the article. In the article you will see that the FBI was actually interviewed for the story (the librarian wasn't available for comment) and said that there was indeed "Clear and Present Danger", but the agents decided to back down anyway (for some hard to justify nebulous reason).
I agree with another poster that it's most likely an exageration (there really wasn't such thread and that's why they decided to back down) but if to this date the official position of the FBI is that there was indeed that thread, then they have some explaining to do.
And if you read a bit more down the article:
But she said the FBI had a right to seize the computers because the agents who went to the Newton library thought Brandeis students, professors, and staff members were in immediate danger.
At the end of the day of course, the librarian was right and the FBI wasn't. But if the standard is "clear and present danger" I am not sure I want my local librarian to make that determination. I think the FBI has a bit more qualification to make that call. They say there was clear and present danger, but then they chose not to do it anyway. Weird. Don't know if I should congratulate them or not for they've done (or in this case, not done).
Right. And not to minimize Sony's fault here, but government users (or most corporate users for that matter) should not be able to install (intentionally or not) software on their own PCs. It's a pretty good bet the NSA and DARPA PCs don't.
Yes, I am seeing variations on that theme where I work as well. Not just on systems, but on databases as well. For example, all in the names of Sarbanes Oxley, they've removed any kind of insert/update/delete rights to data in databases to developer accounts. Nothing but select (and I should feel lucky to have that much).
Like all well-meaning policies, somebody that didn't really know what is going on (in this case the DBA group) went overboard. The problem is: because of Sarbanes Oxley, it's a problem if a developer goes and change financial/accounting type of info directly in the database. Fine. So what do they do? They implement these rules on every database and every table, even databases without any financial/accounting impact whatsoever. So if I was storing application settings in the database, I can't even change those without jumping through tons of hoops. Urgh... Frustrating...
I still disagree. These playstations have a very particular audience, and it isn't mom and pop. In most households, playstation won't even be hooked up to the main TV of the house. Maybe the kid's room. Yes, some people (early twenties video game types) may do what you describe, but that's not the critical mass to push the format wars one way or another.
It's yet to be seen how popular the "Web 2.0" will actual end up being. Everything I've seen so far are just better replacement for existing web application (like a better web mail, a better map interface, some mash ups for other web apps). So far everything has been all rather harmless applications. I don't see everything being replaced by "web 2.0", at least not on the internet.
Now, on an intranet - that's another story. Yes, you can give people dumb terminals. Yes, you can do everything as web apps. Yes, you can remove all the control over the morons. But that's because you have full control over the environment, and the employees don't get a say, and generally they don't care - it's just work.
As far as the current state of things, yes - you're right. Most end users are really better off letting someone else manage their stuff. But we were talking about some utopian future where the network bandwidth is infinite, and the computers are self-defending and healing...
It's not clear that blue-ray in the PS3 will have much of any effect of which standard wins the home theater or computer crowd for that matter. While the PS3 may be able to play movie DVDs, will most people use their PS3 as a DVD movie player? I sincerely doubt it. Let's face it, optical drives in videogame stations could as well be their own proprietary format (like it was with cartridges, back in the days) since these disks don't work in a computer or any other devices. These games are custom designed and compiles for that particular hardware. Their formats don't matter.
I love MS Money too, use it daily. It has the "feature" of uploading all your data to their server so that you can do remote data entry or whatever from their website. I have never allowed MS Money to do that, and the day it becomes a mandatory "feature" is the day I will stop using Money.
I hear you some people will be ok doing this. I am sure you're right, and I am sure some already do in some form now. And I call them all fools.
As far as public transportation, I am all for it (although they go on strike way too often in Europe) but it's just not very practical in the US other than in the big metropolis (like New York). This country is too big, and too spread-out. The infrastructure investement would be significantly higher than in Europe where things are more tightly packed together.
I am guessing he doesn't (I don't either) for the same reason. I'd argue (and he probably would also) that people who lease cars are fools.
But with ubiquitous high speed connections of the future only a fool would actually want to own and maintain his own computer.
I couldn't disagree more. I would say only a fool would want to have their computer hosted somewhere else. Many people are putting a lot of very personal, very sensitive data on their computer including their entire financial life (with tools like MS Money for example). I wouldn't trust a third party with any of this stuff (just last week, my mortgage company sent me a letter to tell me they lost a tape with all my personal info - SS# and all). No to mantion you're now an hostage of the hosting company. You paid your hosting bill late? You can't get to your virtual computer and its data until you pay the $50 reconnection fee.
I understand that many computer users are morons and are unable to keep their PCs free of viruses, trojans, keystroke loggers and those people are very much exposed. Well, I would argue that the solution is better software, and better hardware - not having your PC hosted somewhere lese by some third party.
His comment is correct, although performance issues in both Java and .Net are overblown. C# compiles into bytecode (or whatever MS calls it) and the .Net framework compiles that into machine code and runs it. Same exact concept as Java. There is a performance tradoff to this of course, but the .Net framework mitigates it by caching the generated machine code.
As far as C++, as a matter of fact I believe Microsoft does the exact same thing with their newest flavor of C++, with the option to still generate machine code (no such option for C# and VB.net).
Many business do in fact move to states with lower sales taxes as a sole reason.
No, not really. There really are two groups of businesses - the ones that need to be close to their customers (like brick and mortar retail stores), they will go where there is a customer base, regardless of sales taxes. Other businesses that are not tied to a local customer base (like much of manufacturing for example) might move to locations (or even countries) with lower property taxes, gross receipt taxes, or other business/corporate income taxes. But since sales taxes are not a tax on them, it's really hardly a factor at all. You hear about THOSE kinds of tax related moves all the time.
Wrong. I urge you to review the powers and limits of the federal government in The Constitution. You are urged to review Sections 8-10 that outline just how few rights the federal government has over states and state commerce.
I am quite familiar with the constitution, thank you. This is interstate commerce we're talking about. Not state commerce. It's the feds juridiction.
I read your post (you sound a little bitter, fyi). I don't remember saying that sales taxes (or lack of) is the only factor that makes or breaks a business, or even the main one for that matter. Just one of many. But it's an "unfairness" created by the government (one of many), and therefore that much more stinging. So Amazon pushed you out of business due to their size and their pricing power. Now imagine that they were able to sell everything for 7% even cheaper than they already were, widening the gap even more between their prices and yours. Would you have cared? Would it have mattered to you?
Actually, it's incredibly FAIR as it is right now. You may have heard of this thing called "competition." You see, competition isn't just the arena for private businesses (online vs brick/morter), but also between states. If one state has no sales tax, then they are competing for more businesses to move to that state and make that the base of their operations.
I think you're confused. Competition between states is not a factor here. Even if ALL the states had the exact same sales tax rate (which would eliminate competition in your scenario) the problem would still be exactly the same. You wouldn't pay taxes on purchases made on the internet, while you would for purchases made locally. Also sales taxes is imposed on the consumer, not on the business (the business collects the tax for the state). So the "base of operation" of the business is not a factor either (it is for other kinds of taxes though).
The only factor here is that consumers could choose to move to states without sales taxes (like New Hampshire). Indeed they can. But presumably they live where they live because they like it, and I don't know of anyone that has even considered moving based on the sales taxes. So I don't think it is much a factor in competition between states either.
First of all, the burden to pay the taxes on out of state purchases is on the tax payer, not the businesses. This legislation would attempt to completely shift the burden onto businesses which is completely unfair.
It's not anymore or anyless unfair than it is for the brick and mortar store. Yes the tax is on the individual, and yes the states rely on the stores to collect the tax for them. Tough. It's the price to do business. Pass the cost to your consumers. That's what the brick and mortars do.
If the existing tax collection methods don't work because "nobody in their right mind" wants to pay for what they inherantly know is an unfair tax
No. It has nothing to do with it being an "unfair" tax. It has all to do with human nature. If the only tax an individual had to pay every year was only $10/year per person, people would still not pay it if they knew they wouldn't get caught (yeah, go ahead and tell me you would, I won't call you a liar. I'll just say you're the exception rather than the rule). People just don't like taxes period. Of course, most reasonably people still want/need a government of some sort. And it has to be funded somehow.
And as a "side note", the Feds have no Constitutional right to interfere in state business (not that that's stopped them from instituting most of their unconstitutional agencies and laws).
The federal government absolutely has the right to regulate (and tax) interstate business. Arguably you could say that what the Feds should do is impose a "federal sales taxes" on interstate commerce and distribute the proceed to the state in one way or another. I could see that point.
Well, government needs revenue, that much we agree on. If the revenue goes down either they have to cut spending or find a way to increase their revenue. Cutting spending is a nice idea, but it usually requires cutting things that the citizens need or want (like student loans programs, which were just cut yesterday) and you can only go so far with that without causing other problems (like poverty, homelessness, crime, etc - or simply not getting re-elected).
So usually increasing the revenue is the way to go. That can be achieved either by increasing the tax rates, imposing new taxes, or closing loopholes on people that previously didn't pay taxes when they should. Increasing taxes or creating new taxes also has nasty side effects (like not getting re-elected). Closing loopholes, however, tends to be politically viable since it's seen as fair. The tax-free nature of internet purchases is such a loophole. I think the government let it slide for many years while the revenue it represented was still small, but it's becoming harder and harder to ignore since it's growing.
There is nothing unfair about this. You'd be taxed the same thing wether you go buy something at the local brick and mortar store, or on the web from a company in another state. What's unfair about that? If something is unfair to begin with, it's the current system. Incredibly unfair to brick and mortar stores.
Right now online shopping is tax free basically because of a juridiction issue, not because it's the right thing to do. Sales taxes are levied by the states, and a state doesn't have any authority to enforce anything outside of its borders. Only the federal government can pass laws that would cross state borders.
As a side note - online shopping isn't technically tax free right now. At least in Pennsylvania you're suppose to mail in the sales taxes for purchases you've made "tax free" on the internet. Of course, nobody in their right mind does that. So from that perspective, it's not even a change at all. Just that the feds are stepping in to enforce it.
Actually the article doesn't say that that is the case. It just mantions that possibility as an unproven (and denied) conspiracy theory.
There are recourses for the victim. It will take a little time, but he can file a dispute with the credit bureaus. In the scenario you describe I believe he would get cleared.
You probably (still) cannot get thrown in jail for not paying a bill (except maybe a tax bill, not sure about that one). But they can get court orders to recover their owed money from your possessions, or straight at the source: from your paycheck. And on top of that, you may get hit both for your and their court fees if they go that route (and for $12,000, they might). But most company will write off small debts (less than a couple grants or so), stain your credit report for 7 years in the process, and then sell the debt for pennies on the dollar to collection agencies. Those will be a bit more persistent, but may also give up and resell the debt again to another collection agency for even less money.