Abrogation is an act where an entity gives up their authority by choice. Or... Where an entity evades their responsibility.
Okay. They didn't give up any authority, they hired a subordinate. Having a subordinate does not mean that they are not in charge. Also, if you have a responsibility to get something done, then ordering your lackey to do it is not evading that responsibility. It can potentially be a lazy approach, I won't argue with that, but it isn't necessarily lazy. If you are a manager then it is your job to determine whether your various tasks are best served by doing them yourself or by delegating them to those people whom you manage.
This part though: "Congress did both of these when they created these laws that allow the FCC (and other federal entities) create rules that carry the weight and force of law, without actually creating a specific law in the constitutionally prescribed way."... I don't think I can keep going with this. There's only so many ways I can say the same thing: Congress made the laws. They did it in the constitutionally prescribed way. All that the FCC did was determine, "Here is how the law (which congress made) applies to this particular instance." The net neutrality rules are not laws, the laws are the U.S. Communications Act of 1934 and Telecommunications Act of 1996. It is the job of the FCC to determine how those laws apply.
There are, literally, millions of public servants who do the same thing every day:
V: "Hello, my name is Verizon. I am here at the DMV because I would like a driver's license."
D: "Okay Verizon, I can help you with that... Hm... After looking into this, it seems that you are not a human. Rather, you are a multinational corporation. I'm sorry, I can only give driver's licenses to humans."
V: "Hey now, the law says that corporations are people. That means that I, a corporate person, can have a driver's license."
D: "The law says that corporations are people in some respects. It does not say that corporations can have driver's licenses."
V: "I don't think that you should make that determination, I would like congress to decide whether I can have a driver's license."
D: "It's not a federal law."
V: "Fine. The state legislature then. They should determine whether each individual person can have a driver's license. On a case-by-case basis."
D: "That isn't how it works. The state legislature makes some laws about that, and then it's my job to determine how those laws apply to each person who comes in here asking for a driver's license."
V: "So... what? You're the driver's license god then? You can choose who gets a driver's license and who doesn't, and I can't do shit about it? There's no appeal? I want to talk to your manager."
D: "I'm the manager at this location. But no, of course there's an appeal. If you think that I'm not applying the law correctly, then you can sue. And then the court will decide whether I'm upholding the law as the legislature wrote it, or whether I've made a mistake. Don't you remember how you did that in 2010, when the FCC made a decision about network neutrality that you didn't like? And you remember how the court agreed with you, that the FCC had applied the law incorrectly? So the FCC had to go back and change it? You remember that Verizon? Same thing here. I don't think you're eligible for a driver's license, based on the law that the state legislature made, but if you disagree then you can sue and we'll see what the court has to say about it."
I don't know how I can say this more clearly: Congress made the law. They didn't abrogate shit, they specified - "Here is what a telecommunications service is. Here are the restrictions on it. We're going to call these 'common carrier' restrictions, and they come with some benefits too." and "We are delegating the responsibility of determining what a telecommunications service is to this panel of experts. They know way more about this than we do and can (supposedly) do a better job in this regard. They will also apply and enforce our rules which, let me be clear, are our rules. Which we made, and did not abrogate."
I don't know why you're trying to drag the founders into this. They didn't make the FCC, but they did plenty of delegating. That's how you govern.
This is not a miscarriage of what congress wanted them to do, this is exactly what congress wanted them to do. That is the point.
Congress does pass laws which the FCC is tasked with administering - they passed a law giving the FCC the task of classifying services. They also passed a law giving the FCC the task of administering common carrier rules for telecommunication services. When the FCC classified ISPs as telecommunication services, and then required them to act as common carriers, they were carrying out these two tasks.
Now this new president and congress don't want net neutrality, so they nominated and confirmed commissioners who would reclassify ISPs. This is all working exactly as intended. There are no rogue agents here, no bureaucrats striking out on their own. And even if there were, congress always has the final say.
Uh huh. I'm just going to repeat what I said to the last guy who tried to frame this as a problem of unelected people doing something all on their own:
This is not a good argument. You can't elect every public official, there are 22 million public employees in the united states. How many of those are managerial-level, with decision-making power? You're intending to have elections for all of those? It's perfectly reasonable for congress to delegate responsibility for tasks which they can't handle, either because they don't have the time or because they don't have the expertise. That is what they have done here and, for the most part, that is what they do every time they handle anything.
Further, by framing it this way you're implying that this as a failure of government. The FCC is working exactly as intended: these commissioners were nominated by a Republican president and confirmed by a Republican senate. For some reason, Network Neutrality has become a partisan issue and Republicans are on the side of wanting to kill it. So this result is a predictable one, as a consequence of last year's election.
Congress can overrule the FCC any time they want. The Senate also could have rejected Pai's nomination, or the other commissioners, if they didn't want to see net neutrality killed. It's not like this is a surprise, we knew that Pai was going to do this and they knew that Pai was going to do this too. So the grandparent is spot-on here: if we're looking for people to blame for this, it starts with the commissioners, but it's also the people who appointed them (the president and senators), then the people who appointed
them
(the voters), then the people who are really in charge of all of this (the ISPs).
Everybody's tired of this, it's not just you. A lot of the outrage here stems from the fact that most of us thought this bullshit was over two years ago.
However, this logic:
they are wrong and that they are losing the fight because of it
Doesn't hold. You are being far too optimistic if you think that being right and winning are related.
Handhelds have traditionally been called portable game consoles, among other names. This one, however, hooks up to a TV and plays games on it... I don't see how it could possibly not be called a console.
Huh. Well that would certainly be dumb, but... I've read the article now and it didn't really say much about the reason. Other than the usual "too much screen time is bad for you." I guess I jumped to my own conclusion about that.
I don't follow. "Both ways"? The idea is that phones are banned because they're disruptive, but allowed in certain tightly controlled situations when they are important for a lesson. Both ways of what?
This is simple: cut everything that NASA does that Trump can't put his name on.
If humans go back to the moon, Trump can take the credit for it and people will cheer. If NASA does some critical atmospheric research that no one pays attention to, does it really matter? How critical could it be if it doesn't fit into 140 characters?
Of course there are practical limits to the benefits of high-freedom
That's one way to look at it. You could also see it as a case of competing freedoms: the telecoms' freedom to fuck us over... er,::hem:: the telecoms' freedom to take advantage of their market position, vs. everyone else's freedom to use the internet as they choose (rather than in whichever way the telecoms choose).
Setting aside the fact that Google is not doing what the parent is talking about (Google doesn't have the capability to do that), even if Google were doing it - so what? You're trying to claim that speech should be protected... by allowing for even more censorship?
If Google were doing it, fine. That's something which needs to be dealt with too. Google and Facebook and Amazon and Microsoft and others certainly are doing some bad things (though not this), and I am completely on board with dealing with them as well. This fact is not an argument against network neutrality.
Bleh. I don't even like Reddit, and here I am commenting like I'm a Redditor. Let me try that again:
2) Once it is gone, internet service prices will immediately go up, and performance will immediately drop.
Don't assume that. All the ISPs have to do is wait, and not very long, and people will fail to associate the loss of net neutrality with an increase in prices or a drop in service. It's smaller internet startups who are going to feel the brunt of this for the immediate future, and that's invisible to the public.
> 2) Once it is gone, internet service prices will immediately go up, and performance will immediately drop.
Don't assume that. All the ISPs have to do is wait, and not very long, and people will fail to associate the loss of net neutrality with an increase in prices or a drop in service. It's smaller internet startups who are going to feel the brunt of this for the immediate future, and that's invisible to the public.
The FCC can't overrule the will of congress, and in fact their prior attempt (prior to the one being discussed) was struck down by the supreme court.
I assume that you're talking about the "third way" approach, in which the FCC tried to impose network neutrality while designating ISPs as "information services" rather than "telecommunications services." The court struck that down because the FCC didn't have the authority to regulate information services in this way - in fact I don't think that "information service" is a real thing, it's just a term that they made up as a half-assed compromise - but they did have the authority to regulate telecommunications services. So, the court said, all that the FCC needed to do was change this designation, then they could apply network neutrality without issue. Both of these powers, determining what what category a service falls under, and regulating telecommunications services, are powers granted to the FCC by congress.
I don't know what you mean by "visceral argument." You seem to agree with me that our current Republican government is responsible for selling us out, you just don't seem to think that that this is a problem. You also make reference to an explicit instruction by congress not to regulate the internet - I'm not familiar with this instruction, but it is certain that it either doesn't say what you're implying or that it's one of multiple instructions that the FCC has received on this issue (I'm sure that they have had many, and I doubt that they all agree).
This is not a good argument. You can't elect every public official, there are 22 million public employees in the united states. How many of those are managerial-level, with decision-making power? You're intending to have elections for all of those? It's perfectly reasonable for congress to delegate responsibility for tasks which they can't handle, either because they don't have the time or because they don't have the expertise. That is what they have done here and, for the most part, that is what they do every time they handle anything.
Further, by framing it this way you're implying that this as a failure of government. The FCC is working exactly as intended: these commissioners were nominated by a Republican president and confirmed by a Republican senate. For some reason, Network Neutrality has become a partisan issue and Republicans are on the side of wanting to kill it. So this result is a predictable one, as a consequence of last year's election.
Congress can overrule the FCC any time they want. The Senate also could have rejected Pai's nomination, or the other commissioners, if they didn't want to see net neutrality killed. It's not like this is a surprise, we knew that Pai was going to do this and they knew that Pai was going to do this too. So the grandparent is spot-on here: if we're looking for people to blame for this, it starts with the commissioners, but it's also the people who appointed them (the president and senators), then the people who appointed them (the voters), then the people who are really in charge of all of this (the ISPs).
I'm sorry, are you trying to suggest that a random unemployment story, submitted by an AC, is not propaganda? Or are you just saying that you don't care?
Most of these job killing regulations are unnecessary.
I don't usually cal people shills, I figure that most people are just gullible or something, but this is literally just a talking point. You (and I use the word "you" loosely here, since you're probably a bot) are taking what I hate about C-Span, and bringing it here to Slashdot. Thank you Shill-bot, we obviously weren't meeting our quota of political rhetoric.
This is an old problem with micropayments, it stems from how credit cards asses their fees. This is why stores often have a minimum purchase to use a credit card, this is why games and other platforms which use micropayments use special currency that you buy in a lump sum up front, and this is why the really small micropayments that people used to fantasize about (pay 1-2 cents for a webcomic, for example) have never happened.
People in this thread are assuming that this isn't a problem for Patreon, and so this move is nothing but a money grab, but while it obviously is a way for them to make more money... "more money" can also mean "less negative money." When you all are talking about lumping payments together, what you're really saying is that Patreon is assuming some of the risk for those payments. Risk that is covered by the banks through their processing fee. There's no reason to assume that all payments can be lumped like that anyway, and I'm sure that there are many which can't. For a company like Patreon which does so many small transactions, this is very costly.
Consumers are usually shielded from this fee by a contract which the banks force retailers to sign which forbids them from charging extra to people who pay with a credit card. It's in the banks' interest to hide this from consumers so that they will use credit cards more, and retailers generally aren't big enough to fight back against it. Those retailers which are big enough generally don't fight back, instead opting to get a piece of the action by issuing their own credit cards.
I don't know why I hate this particular form of exploitation, but I hate this. In particular. It reminds me of the fight between drug companies and health insurers, where the drug companies are always trying to get patients to unwittingly and unnecessarily spend more of the insurers money, and the insurers can do very little to fight back. It's exploiting and maintaining peoples' ignorance to make the economy significantly less efficient, but less efficient in a way which will slightly benefit you.
The only solution that I can see in the case of credit cards is eliminating this clause in the contract which forbids retailers to charge extra to people who pay with a credit card. By exposing the fees and allowing people to make an informed decision about it, the free market could do its thing. But this would require regulation and, according to popular rhetoric, regulation is always bad for the free market.
To bring this back to TFA: I assume that this clause is part of the reason why Patreon is spinning this move in this way. Virtually all of their payments come from credit cards, but they're not allowed to charge people those extra fees explicitly. This is kind of a bold step on their part, they're probably skirting the edge of what they can get away with by passing the fee to consumers and calling it a "service fee," but in reality::nudge::::wink:: it's a "fuck you" from the banks.
The approach that some brick & mortar stores take is to raise their prices on everything, and then offer a discount to people who pay with cash. This is yet another reason why we need digital cash.
You're using the word "belittle" in a funny way. And you're also using the phrase "scientifically proven," which... well, let's just say that you need to be careful with that. It's generally best avoided.
I didn't read the article linked above, but I did read Damore's paper. He did a piss-poor job of supporting his points. Some of his claims weren't cited at all, and those which were supported were mostly just links to wikipedia articles or individual studies. It's the sort of "proof" that I expect to see in an internet forum, but it is nowhere near good enough to support the kind of inflammatory claims that he was making in a professional setting.
So. Have I belittled the effect of all of the "scientifically proven" gender difference that Damore brought up? I think that all I did was belittle his paper. Which was bad. And it's unfortunate, because some of his suggestions weren't so bad. Really, if he had just left out the middle part of his paper it would have been okay, and this topic is one which should be discussed. But he was not discussing, he was ranting and in a very familiar way. Dude spends too much time on the internet.
In most countries corruption is illegal. In America, it is not.
Ha ha, no. In America it just isn't corruption if it isn't explicitly bribery with a clear quid pro quo agreement between the two parties. In America we have our own definitions for lots of words, some people call that "American exceptionalism."
it is fine, as the highly controversial Citizens United ruling said in 2010, for wealthy campaign contributors to expect that their dollars will buy “ingratiation or access” in governor’s mansions and statehouses
Slashdot Mirror
Abrogation is an act where an entity gives up their authority by choice. Or... Where an entity evades their responsibility.
Okay. They didn't give up any authority, they hired a subordinate. Having a subordinate does not mean that they are not in charge. Also, if you have a responsibility to get something done, then ordering your lackey to do it is not evading that responsibility. It can potentially be a lazy approach, I won't argue with that, but it isn't necessarily lazy. If you are a manager then it is your job to determine whether your various tasks are best served by doing them yourself or by delegating them to those people whom you manage.
... I don't think I can keep going with this. There's only so many ways I can say the same thing: Congress made the laws. They did it in the constitutionally prescribed way. All that the FCC did was determine, "Here is how the law (which congress made) applies to this particular instance." The net neutrality rules are not laws, the laws are the U.S. Communications Act of 1934 and Telecommunications Act of 1996. It is the job of the FCC to determine how those laws apply.
This part though: "Congress did both of these when they created these laws that allow the FCC (and other federal entities) create rules that carry the weight and force of law, without actually creating a specific law in the constitutionally prescribed way."
There are, literally, millions of public servants who do the same thing every day:
V: "Hello, my name is Verizon. I am here at the DMV because I would like a driver's license."
D: "Okay Verizon, I can help you with that... Hm... After looking into this, it seems that you are not a human. Rather, you are a multinational corporation. I'm sorry, I can only give driver's licenses to humans."
V: "Hey now, the law says that corporations are people. That means that I, a corporate person, can have a driver's license."
D: "The law says that corporations are people in some respects. It does not say that corporations can have driver's licenses."
V: "I don't think that you should make that determination, I would like congress to decide whether I can have a driver's license."
D: "It's not a federal law."
V: "Fine. The state legislature then. They should determine whether each individual person can have a driver's license. On a case-by-case basis."
D: "That isn't how it works. The state legislature makes some laws about that, and then it's my job to determine how those laws apply to each person who comes in here asking for a driver's license."
V: "So... what? You're the driver's license god then? You can choose who gets a driver's license and who doesn't, and I can't do shit about it? There's no appeal? I want to talk to your manager."
D: "I'm the manager at this location. But no, of course there's an appeal. If you think that I'm not applying the law correctly, then you can sue. And then the court will decide whether I'm upholding the law as the legislature wrote it, or whether I've made a mistake. Don't you remember how you did that in 2010, when the FCC made a decision about network neutrality that you didn't like? And you remember how the court agreed with you, that the FCC had applied the law incorrectly? So the FCC had to go back and change it? You remember that Verizon? Same thing here. I don't think you're eligible for a driver's license, based on the law that the state legislature made, but if you disagree then you can sue and we'll see what the court has to say about it."
I don't know how I can say this more clearly: Congress made the law. They didn't abrogate shit, they specified - "Here is what a telecommunications service is. Here are the restrictions on it. We're going to call these 'common carrier' restrictions, and they come with some benefits too." and "We are delegating the responsibility of determining what a telecommunications service is to this panel of experts. They know way more about this than we do and can (supposedly) do a better job in this regard. They will also apply and enforce our rules which, let me be clear, are our rules. Which we made, and did not abrogate."
I don't know why you're trying to drag the founders into this. They didn't make the FCC, but they did plenty of delegating. That's how you govern.
... Okay? Why not? Sure, they're consoles too. They meet all the criteria, why deny them that status?
This is not a miscarriage of what congress wanted them to do, this is exactly what congress wanted them to do. That is the point.
Congress does pass laws which the FCC is tasked with administering - they passed a law giving the FCC the task of classifying services. They also passed a law giving the FCC the task of administering common carrier rules for telecommunication services. When the FCC classified ISPs as telecommunication services, and then required them to act as common carriers, they were carrying out these two tasks.
Now this new president and congress don't want net neutrality, so they nominated and confirmed commissioners who would reclassify ISPs. This is all working exactly as intended. There are no rogue agents here, no bureaucrats striking out on their own. And even if there were, congress always has the final say.
This is not a good argument. You can't elect every public official, there are 22 million public employees in the united states. How many of those are managerial-level, with decision-making power? You're intending to have elections for all of those? It's perfectly reasonable for congress to delegate responsibility for tasks which they can't handle, either because they don't have the time or because they don't have the expertise. That is what they have done here and, for the most part, that is what they do every time they handle anything.
Further, by framing it this way you're implying that this as a failure of government. The FCC is working exactly as intended: these commissioners were nominated by a Republican president and confirmed by a Republican senate. For some reason, Network Neutrality has become a partisan issue and Republicans are on the side of wanting to kill it. So this result is a predictable one, as a consequence of last year's election.
Congress can overrule the FCC any time they want. The Senate also could have rejected Pai's nomination, or the other commissioners, if they didn't want to see net neutrality killed. It's not like this is a surprise, we knew that Pai was going to do this and they knew that Pai was going to do this too. So the grandparent is spot-on here: if we're looking for people to blame for this, it starts with the commissioners, but it's also the people who appointed them (the president and senators), then the people who appointed them (the voters), then the people who are really in charge of all of this (the ISPs).
No, by that logic the Sony PSP was a console and a handheld.
However, this logic:
they are wrong and that they are losing the fight because of it
Doesn't hold. You are being far too optimistic if you think that being right and winning are related.
Handhelds have traditionally been called portable game consoles, among other names. This one, however, hooks up to a TV and plays games on it... I don't see how it could possibly not be called a console.
Huh. Well that would certainly be dumb, but... I've read the article now and it didn't really say much about the reason. Other than the usual "too much screen time is bad for you." I guess I jumped to my own conclusion about that.
There's an XKCD for this.
I don't follow. "Both ways"? The idea is that phones are banned because they're disruptive, but allowed in certain tightly controlled situations when they are important for a lesson. Both ways of what?
This is simple: cut everything that NASA does that Trump can't put his name on.
If humans go back to the moon, Trump can take the credit for it and people will cheer. If NASA does some critical atmospheric research that no one pays attention to, does it really matter? How critical could it be if it doesn't fit into 140 characters?
Let NOAA deal with the climate.
Ha ha. 17% cut to the NOAA's budget too.
Of course there are practical limits to the benefits of high-freedom
That's one way to look at it. You could also see it as a case of competing freedoms: the telecoms' freedom to fuck us over... er, ::hem:: the telecoms' freedom to take advantage of their market position, vs. everyone else's freedom to use the internet as they choose (rather than in whichever way the telecoms choose).
Setting aside the fact that Google is not doing what the parent is talking about (Google doesn't have the capability to do that), even if Google were doing it - so what? You're trying to claim that speech should be protected... by allowing for even more censorship?
If Google were doing it, fine. That's something which needs to be dealt with too. Google and Facebook and Amazon and Microsoft and others certainly are doing some bad things (though not this), and I am completely on board with dealing with them as well. This fact is not an argument against network neutrality.
2) Once it is gone, internet service prices will immediately go up, and performance will immediately drop.
Don't assume that. All the ISPs have to do is wait, and not very long, and people will fail to associate the loss of net neutrality with an increase in prices or a drop in service. It's smaller internet startups who are going to feel the brunt of this for the immediate future, and that's invisible to the public.
> 2) Once it is gone, internet service prices will immediately go up, and performance will immediately drop. Don't assume that. All the ISPs have to do is wait, and not very long, and people will fail to associate the loss of net neutrality with an increase in prices or a drop in service. It's smaller internet startups who are going to feel the brunt of this for the immediate future, and that's invisible to the public.
The FCC can't overrule the will of congress, and in fact their prior attempt (prior to the one being discussed) was struck down by the supreme court.
I assume that you're talking about the "third way" approach, in which the FCC tried to impose network neutrality while designating ISPs as "information services" rather than "telecommunications services." The court struck that down because the FCC didn't have the authority to regulate information services in this way - in fact I don't think that "information service" is a real thing, it's just a term that they made up as a half-assed compromise - but they did have the authority to regulate telecommunications services. So, the court said, all that the FCC needed to do was change this designation, then they could apply network neutrality without issue. Both of these powers, determining what what category a service falls under, and regulating telecommunications services, are powers granted to the FCC by congress.
I don't know what you mean by "visceral argument." You seem to agree with me that our current Republican government is responsible for selling us out, you just don't seem to think that that this is a problem. You also make reference to an explicit instruction by congress not to regulate the internet - I'm not familiar with this instruction, but it is certain that it either doesn't say what you're implying or that it's one of multiple instructions that the FCC has received on this issue (I'm sure that they have had many, and I doubt that they all agree).
This is not a good argument. You can't elect every public official, there are 22 million public employees in the united states. How many of those are managerial-level, with decision-making power? You're intending to have elections for all of those? It's perfectly reasonable for congress to delegate responsibility for tasks which they can't handle, either because they don't have the time or because they don't have the expertise. That is what they have done here and, for the most part, that is what they do every time they handle anything.
Further, by framing it this way you're implying that this as a failure of government. The FCC is working exactly as intended: these commissioners were nominated by a Republican president and confirmed by a Republican senate. For some reason, Network Neutrality has become a partisan issue and Republicans are on the side of wanting to kill it. So this result is a predictable one, as a consequence of last year's election.
Congress can overrule the FCC any time they want. The Senate also could have rejected Pai's nomination, or the other commissioners, if they didn't want to see net neutrality killed. It's not like this is a surprise, we knew that Pai was going to do this and they knew that Pai was going to do this too. So the grandparent is spot-on here: if we're looking for people to blame for this, it starts with the commissioners, but it's also the people who appointed them (the president and senators), then the people who appointed them (the voters), then the people who are really in charge of all of this (the ISPs).
I'm sorry, are you trying to suggest that a random unemployment story, submitted by an AC, is not propaganda? Or are you just saying that you don't care?
It's a story that can be spun in a political manner, submitted by an AC. It's propaganda.
Most of these job killing regulations are unnecessary.
I don't usually cal people shills, I figure that most people are just gullible or something, but this is literally just a talking point. You (and I use the word "you" loosely here, since you're probably a bot) are taking what I hate about C-Span, and bringing it here to Slashdot. Thank you Shill-bot, we obviously weren't meeting our quota of political rhetoric.
This is an old problem with micropayments, it stems from how credit cards asses their fees. This is why stores often have a minimum purchase to use a credit card, this is why games and other platforms which use micropayments use special currency that you buy in a lump sum up front, and this is why the really small micropayments that people used to fantasize about (pay 1-2 cents for a webcomic, for example) have never happened.
::nudge:: ::wink:: it's a "fuck you" from the banks.
People in this thread are assuming that this isn't a problem for Patreon, and so this move is nothing but a money grab, but while it obviously is a way for them to make more money... "more money" can also mean "less negative money." When you all are talking about lumping payments together, what you're really saying is that Patreon is assuming some of the risk for those payments. Risk that is covered by the banks through their processing fee. There's no reason to assume that all payments can be lumped like that anyway, and I'm sure that there are many which can't. For a company like Patreon which does so many small transactions, this is very costly.
Consumers are usually shielded from this fee by a contract which the banks force retailers to sign which forbids them from charging extra to people who pay with a credit card. It's in the banks' interest to hide this from consumers so that they will use credit cards more, and retailers generally aren't big enough to fight back against it. Those retailers which are big enough generally don't fight back, instead opting to get a piece of the action by issuing their own credit cards.
I don't know why I hate this particular form of exploitation, but I hate this. In particular. It reminds me of the fight between drug companies and health insurers, where the drug companies are always trying to get patients to unwittingly and unnecessarily spend more of the insurers money, and the insurers can do very little to fight back. It's exploiting and maintaining peoples' ignorance to make the economy significantly less efficient, but less efficient in a way which will slightly benefit you.
The only solution that I can see in the case of credit cards is eliminating this clause in the contract which forbids retailers to charge extra to people who pay with a credit card. By exposing the fees and allowing people to make an informed decision about it, the free market could do its thing. But this would require regulation and, according to popular rhetoric, regulation is always bad for the free market.
To bring this back to TFA: I assume that this clause is part of the reason why Patreon is spinning this move in this way. Virtually all of their payments come from credit cards, but they're not allowed to charge people those extra fees explicitly. This is kind of a bold step on their part, they're probably skirting the edge of what they can get away with by passing the fee to consumers and calling it a "service fee," but in reality
The approach that some brick & mortar stores take is to raise their prices on everything, and then offer a discount to people who pay with cash. This is yet another reason why we need digital cash.
You're using the word "belittle" in a funny way. And you're also using the phrase "scientifically proven," which... well, let's just say that you need to be careful with that. It's generally best avoided.
I didn't read the article linked above, but I did read Damore's paper. He did a piss-poor job of supporting his points. Some of his claims weren't cited at all, and those which were supported were mostly just links to wikipedia articles or individual studies. It's the sort of "proof" that I expect to see in an internet forum, but it is nowhere near good enough to support the kind of inflammatory claims that he was making in a professional setting.
So. Have I belittled the effect of all of the "scientifically proven" gender difference that Damore brought up? I think that all I did was belittle his paper. Which was bad. And it's unfortunate, because some of his suggestions weren't so bad. Really, if he had just left out the middle part of his paper it would have been okay, and this topic is one which should be discussed. But he was not discussing, he was ranting and in a very familiar way. Dude spends too much time on the internet.
In most countries corruption is illegal. In America, it is not.
Ha ha, no. In America it just isn't corruption if it isn't explicitly bribery with a clear quid pro quo agreement between the two parties. In America we have our own definitions for lots of words, some people call that "American exceptionalism."
it is fine, as the highly controversial Citizens United ruling said in 2010, for wealthy campaign contributors to expect that their dollars will buy “ingratiation or access” in governor’s mansions and statehouses