Companies should be free to refuse to do business with any individual as long as the reason is non-discriminatory. And if it turns out that the customer simply isn't profitable due to a high return rate, that seems pretty reasonable to me. Nobody really wants unprofitable customers. And arguably those who have high return rates drive up prices for everybody. But this should be disclosed at the time of the sale not when the return comes in the door. When the purchase is made, the retailer can use the payment card data to decide if they want to complete the sale. Or they can tell the customer that it's a final sale and ask if they want to proceed. Waiting until the return happens is pretty unethical
The New York times published a provoking editorial. They do this kind of stuff. It's what makes them a new source rather than a propaganda machine. The NYT is not advocating that we have Chinese-style government with press freedoms curtailed and journalists killed/jailed! The column does rightly criticize how hard it is to get thing done in the US. All systems have advantages and disadvantages and people/corporations learn how to game whatever system is in place. Also, water is wet.
I'm struggling with the same thing. Addresses are convenient in places where they work because they facilitate the final, local navigation especially in dense urban areas where GPS may not be accurate enough to find individual buildings. For remote places, lat/long seems like a just fine identifier. There are some cities without (good) address systems where maybe this will help. Maybe this really does assist somehow in India, but we'd need more problem description to understand it. I don't see value in North America or Western Europe.
Did you read the parent post before you replied? HSBC did not proactively market to terrorists. "Special savings rates for terrorists who blow stuff up."
I'm sure they *can* do these things but the reality is that if the states are ever effective at this, AirBNB will be out of business. And so far companies like AirBNB, Uber, et cetera, have managed to frustrate any attempts to regulate them. The regulatory framework just can't keep up. It's not just AirBNB where this is a problem. People will find ways to skirt the rules and AirBNB has an incentive to turn a blind eye. I own four units but don't rent on AirBNB. The state regulators would never catch me but the HOAs would know within minutes. I have eight nieces and nephews though and it woudln't be hard to run eight properties through AirBNB without the state catching on. If AirBNB wanted to enforce the rules that would be much harder (Hey why do these eight listings in the same town from eight different people all come from the same IP address?) But as long as AirBNB is helping the hotel operators hide from the regulators, the lawlessness will continue. In order for this to abate, some state attorney general would have to decide to use RICO charges or something.
#3 has nothing to do with pharmaceutical profits. Antibiotics for humans are all generic and cheap and there's no profit in them. It is a cultural problem of patients demanding them.
This is the most nonsense comment I've ever seen. You could sign up for FB and just use it as an authentication provider. You don't have to actually engage with the platform. Its not even a karma-whore post since it's AC. I've seen plenty of services require github login or the like. But FB is the most ubiquitous. I'd love if I could login to corporate resources using my FB credentials
Well your original post mentioned that the protesters were "well off" and I'm not aware of either of the three groups you just mentioned traditionally being considered "well off" so it seems that you are sticking with a propaganda point similar to the "crisis actors" falsehood that's being bandied about.
The difference in price between a hotel and a short-term rental is approximately equal to the hotel tax. And hotels have to meet much higher standards than short-term rentals. So what this means practically for customers is that you are giving up all of the safety and security of a hotel just to save a few tax dollars. And people are flocking to it.
Rules are only useful if they can be enforced. Rental units are being diverted to ghost hotels. If you add rent controls the diversion will increase until most every building is a ghost hotel. AirBNB is a very effective tool for skirting the rules disguised as a legitimate platform which is why it gets so much attention.
What "middle class" person do you know who can take off work for days in a row and camp out in a park and still have a job? If they do this, they'd end up poor real fast.
The "everyone else" to whom you refer is a very small percentage of the population despite a very large surface area. As the world urbanizes, this is going to get more and more exacerbated. Unfortunately there aren't a lot of good solutions on the table to try to accommodate the vastly different populations that we see everywhere. Unfortunately both sides are digging in. The obvious outcome of that is that densely populated urban areas will dominate policy sine they dominate the population. I don't think that's a great outcome but it also seems inevitable and exacerbated by the disingenuous messaging coming from politicians. And at the risk of getting down-modded, this is especially true from our "conservative" voices.
Another poster has pointed out that the *leaders* of such events may be well-off, but the attendees are fairly ordinary people. Most of the middle/upper class (a) can't take off work to join these things and (b) aren't that civic-minded even if they could. Sorry but this is a alt-right story similar to crisis actors.
That won't let you access any of the data, at least not if BitLocker is on. If you modify the hardware configuration, the TPM won't prouce the BitLocker key and the machine won't boot. It's just generic hardware at that point.
Maybe there's a way I could use this feature to give advice to other drivers. Like "Hey, slow down idiot" or "Next time use a turn signal." I'm sure that would go over well.
I've never used Geek Squad. Is there something you have to sign when you get your equipment repaired? There very well may be a consent clause in there. Since I'm not a GS customer and I'm also not a lawyer, I don't know, but most agreements these days seem to basically say that you waive all of your legal and human rights.
And what about the whole generation of people who experienced this inequality their whole life? They should just suck it up? You're right, that this is the ideal long-term solution but we still have to manage the world as it is today. And right now there's no progress being made on the inequality you describe. So we are at 0 for 2 as a society and it's no surprise that companies are reaching for whatever solutions are feasible even if sub-optimal
Since the depreciation of their vehicle is a non-cash expense, they are probably looking at cash flow and feel like they are making more than they are.
By your logic, people could decide that they don't need car insurance or that they need less than their state minimum liability requirements. You might say that car insurance is different because you can cause harm to others. And if we were willing to let people die at the hospital for lack of insurance, that would be a pretty good argument. But since we provide a certain minimum level of care regardless of ability to pay, everybody is a participant in the health insurance market. That's the argument that SCOTUS used when deciding if the law was constitutional. As long as we aren't willing to let people die for lack of insurance, this isn't as much of an individual choice as you make it to be. And despite your assertion, the insurance regulators in every state do decide what a "good" plan should be. They did before ACA and they do now. Since the government is the final backstop for healthcare costs, the government can and should decide what a "good" plan is or at least a "minimum" plan.
Slashdot Mirror
Companies should be free to refuse to do business with any individual as long as the reason is non-discriminatory. And if it turns out that the customer simply isn't profitable due to a high return rate, that seems pretty reasonable to me. Nobody really wants unprofitable customers. And arguably those who have high return rates drive up prices for everybody. But this should be disclosed at the time of the sale not when the return comes in the door. When the purchase is made, the retailer can use the payment card data to decide if they want to complete the sale. Or they can tell the customer that it's a final sale and ask if they want to proceed. Waiting until the return happens is pretty unethical
Best Buy does print device serials
The New York times published a provoking editorial. They do this kind of stuff. It's what makes them a new source rather than a propaganda machine. The NYT is not advocating that we have Chinese-style government with press freedoms curtailed and journalists killed/jailed! The column does rightly criticize how hard it is to get thing done in the US. All systems have advantages and disadvantages and people/corporations learn how to game whatever system is in place. Also, water is wet.
I'm struggling with the same thing. Addresses are convenient in places where they work because they facilitate the final, local navigation especially in dense urban areas where GPS may not be accurate enough to find individual buildings. For remote places, lat/long seems like a just fine identifier. There are some cities without (good) address systems where maybe this will help. Maybe this really does assist somehow in India, but we'd need more problem description to understand it. I don't see value in North America or Western Europe.
Markup != profit
Did you read the parent post before you replied? HSBC did not proactively market to terrorists. "Special savings rates for terrorists who blow stuff up."
I'm sure they *can* do these things but the reality is that if the states are ever effective at this, AirBNB will be out of business. And so far companies like AirBNB, Uber, et cetera, have managed to frustrate any attempts to regulate them. The regulatory framework just can't keep up. It's not just AirBNB where this is a problem. People will find ways to skirt the rules and AirBNB has an incentive to turn a blind eye. I own four units but don't rent on AirBNB. The state regulators would never catch me but the HOAs would know within minutes. I have eight nieces and nephews though and it woudln't be hard to run eight properties through AirBNB without the state catching on. If AirBNB wanted to enforce the rules that would be much harder (Hey why do these eight listings in the same town from eight different people all come from the same IP address?) But as long as AirBNB is helping the hotel operators hide from the regulators, the lawlessness will continue. In order for this to abate, some state attorney general would have to decide to use RICO charges or something.
#3 has nothing to do with pharmaceutical profits. Antibiotics for humans are all generic and cheap and there's no profit in them. It is a cultural problem of patients demanding them.
This is the most nonsense comment I've ever seen. You could sign up for FB and just use it as an authentication provider. You don't have to actually engage with the platform. Its not even a karma-whore post since it's AC. I've seen plenty of services require github login or the like. But FB is the most ubiquitous. I'd love if I could login to corporate resources using my FB credentials
Well your original post mentioned that the protesters were "well off" and I'm not aware of either of the three groups you just mentioned traditionally being considered "well off" so it seems that you are sticking with a propaganda point similar to the "crisis actors" falsehood that's being bandied about.
The difference in price between a hotel and a short-term rental is approximately equal to the hotel tax. And hotels have to meet much higher standards than short-term rentals. So what this means practically for customers is that you are giving up all of the safety and security of a hotel just to save a few tax dollars. And people are flocking to it.
I don't agree. What else are those people supposed to do? Go hungry?
Rules are only useful if they can be enforced. Rental units are being diverted to ghost hotels. If you add rent controls the diversion will increase until most every building is a ghost hotel. AirBNB is a very effective tool for skirting the rules disguised as a legitimate platform which is why it gets so much attention.
What "middle class" person do you know who can take off work for days in a row and camp out in a park and still have a job? If they do this, they'd end up poor real fast.
The "everyone else" to whom you refer is a very small percentage of the population despite a very large surface area. As the world urbanizes, this is going to get more and more exacerbated. Unfortunately there aren't a lot of good solutions on the table to try to accommodate the vastly different populations that we see everywhere. Unfortunately both sides are digging in. The obvious outcome of that is that densely populated urban areas will dominate policy sine they dominate the population. I don't think that's a great outcome but it also seems inevitable and exacerbated by the disingenuous messaging coming from politicians. And at the risk of getting down-modded, this is especially true from our "conservative" voices.
Like just about everywhere in the US.
> There are a lot of highly educated engineers
Right. So it's like the rest of the US except there are a higher-proportion of good jobs.
Nobody is saying California/SF is a utopia just that it's doing better in many regards than much of the rest of the country.
Another poster has pointed out that the *leaders* of such events may be well-off, but the attendees are fairly ordinary people. Most of the middle/upper class (a) can't take off work to join these things and (b) aren't that civic-minded even if they could. Sorry but this is a alt-right story similar to crisis actors.
That won't let you access any of the data, at least not if BitLocker is on. If you modify the hardware configuration, the TPM won't prouce the BitLocker key and the machine won't boot. It's just generic hardware at that point.
Maybe there's a way I could use this feature to give advice to other drivers. Like "Hey, slow down idiot" or "Next time use a turn signal." I'm sure that would go over well.
I've never used Geek Squad. Is there something you have to sign when you get your equipment repaired? There very well may be a consent clause in there. Since I'm not a GS customer and I'm also not a lawyer, I don't know, but most agreements these days seem to basically say that you waive all of your legal and human rights.
I'm not sure why you are positioning these two things as mutually exclusive. We can do both.
And what about the whole generation of people who experienced this inequality their whole life? They should just suck it up? You're right, that this is the ideal long-term solution but we still have to manage the world as it is today. And right now there's no progress being made on the inequality you describe. So we are at 0 for 2 as a society and it's no surprise that companies are reaching for whatever solutions are feasible even if sub-optimal
Since the depreciation of their vehicle is a non-cash expense, they are probably looking at cash flow and feel like they are making more than they are.
By your logic, people could decide that they don't need car insurance or that they need less than their state minimum liability requirements. You might say that car insurance is different because you can cause harm to others. And if we were willing to let people die at the hospital for lack of insurance, that would be a pretty good argument. But since we provide a certain minimum level of care regardless of ability to pay, everybody is a participant in the health insurance market. That's the argument that SCOTUS used when deciding if the law was constitutional. As long as we aren't willing to let people die for lack of insurance, this isn't as much of an individual choice as you make it to be. And despite your assertion, the insurance regulators in every state do decide what a "good" plan should be. They did before ACA and they do now. Since the government is the final backstop for healthcare costs, the government can and should decide what a "good" plan is or at least a "minimum" plan.
Well we both got modded down, so I guess it's one of those days.