You are speaking under the assumption that legalized gambling is "immoral". It may be "wrong" for the "Right" to pretend to be against online gambling, but there is absolutly nothing wrong with U.S. companies running gambling websites. People have the right to do whatever they want with their money, so long as they aren't doing physical harm to others. Even assuming that gambling is somehow "bad" for society (which it isn't), better that people gamble legaly in the safety on an online casino than in some back room "casino" run by criminals.
While it is disgusting if the "Right" is pretending to be against gambling, if in fact that is what they are doing... if the conspiracy theory that the "Right" really does support legalized gambling is true like you say it is, then I would much rather support the hypocritical right who will eventually legalize gambling than the paternalistic authoritarian left who are geniune in their moralistic crusade to control people's lives.
Now, don't get me wrong, I believe the "Right" are as genuine facists as the "Left", and both truly want to ban gambling for moral reasons (for the Right, because gambling is a "sin", for the left because gambling is "capitalistic")... but if your conspiracy theory is true, and the Right are really secretly closet libertarians, then that would make the Right the guys that I want to support over the Left.
In terms of online gaming, the U.S. has tried to do what you mentioned, and is usually told in more legalistic terms to fuck off. In the same way the U.S. wouldn't extradite Yahoo employees or hand over Yahoo's U.S. assets to China if Yahoo happened to violate Chinese censorship laws, in countries where online casinos are perfectly legal, there is no way they are going to shut down that revenue source.
You might have taken legal action against a foriegn company for something that was illegal in both countries, but short of the U.S. threatening assasination/economic sanctions/military invasion or various other sorts of brute intimidation, no soveriegn country is going to destroy a perfectly legal industry just because the U.S. asks nicely.
Except that all economic exchange is balanced! What do you think those countries are going to do with the American dollars they get from gambling? American dollars are no longer redeemable for gold (the gold standard disapeared a long time ago), which means they are going to use those dollars to purchase American goods and services, or trade those dollars to others who want to purchase American goods and services.
"Trade" literally means trade... as in they send us stuff we want, and we send them stuff that they want (or we send them a promise to give them even more stuff they want in the future). We trade for it. Get it? Money is just a means of exchange to facilitate the exchange of goods and services.
The U.S. trade deficit exists because the U.S. is borrowing insane amounts of money to spend on consumer goods (or the government is doing it on our behalf). The U.S. trade deficit isn't a problem we have with other countries, so much as it is the suicidal economic behavior of Americans. Instead of trading stuff they want for stuff we want, the U.S. is trading the promise for lots and lots of stuff they want in the future, for stuff we want now. If Americans and America weren't loaded with debt, trade between the U.S. and other countries would be relatively balanced.
What I don't understand is... why is gambling deemed such a big deal in the USA? You allow people to drink, smoke, carry guns and prostitute themselves (in some states, at least), but not to bet on certain outcomes. It just seems really bizarre to me, particularly when you allow betting on other outcomes, such as dabbling in the financial markets.
Drinking, and smoking are illegal to do in most public places... guns are vitually banned except in a handful of places, and prostitution is only legal in one county in Nevada. And "gambling" on the stock market - well the SEC is doing all it can to heavily restrict that too. All in all, the U.S. is pretty damn authoritarian.
Now, if you are a European or Canadian, don't get smug. Most of those places are outright authoritarian in their own way - it is just that they never prided themselves on being "the land of the free", so it isn't as ironic when they are oppressive.
Choose a reason why gambling "should" be illegal, depending on your point of view:
1. Gambling is a sin, and it is the government's job to enforce god's laws, you miserable sinner!
2. Gambling is capitalist exploitation, and it is the job of the state to protect the proletariat from counter-revolutionary moral influences!
Ultimatly, all bans on gambling usually come down to one of these reasons, even if the rhetoric is a bit watered down to make it seem "reasonable" to the electorate.
These laws aren't supposed to "protect" the casual gambler... the casual gambler isn't going to gamble online because it is boring. They rather bet with their friends on the big game, or gamble during the weekly poker game.
These laws are (in rhetoric) to protect the chronic gambler from betting away his children's college fund. That kind of guy can easily get around this law.
Therefore, this law doesn't have any positive moral effects whatsoever (assuming it is even the job of the government to babysit all its citizens)... it doesn't stop online gambling at all. And everyone, including the law makers, know that. Not only that, but online casinos were pretty much illegal before this law.
What this law does is set the precendent that even linking to a site can be a crime. Linking to an "illegal" (illegal being used loosly, as these online casinos are absolutly 100% legal in the countries they are run!) sites is now a crime. Once this law is challenged and then held up in courts, expect all kinds of laws regulating who and what you can link to!
Laws shouldn't be about whether they are popular or not, *OR* desirable or not. Laws should be about protecting individuals from direct unwanted harm caused by others... or to maintain the general peace.
Since none of this gambling is involuntary, and none of it fails the "does it scare the horses" test of maintaining the peace, there shouldn't even be debate about banning online gambling in a free and democratic society, any more than there should be a debate about slavery or censorship in a free society. Laws like this deserve nothing but scorn from free people in what is supposed to be a democratic society.
No, when you watch a movie on TV there is an implicit understanding that they may have to cut it down to add commercials / fit in time slot etc. (in fact, all the movies I have watched on TV recently have included a notice at the begining of the movie explicitly saying that it has been edited to fit on the screen and for time).. But when I purchase or rent something on DVD, I do it with the implicit understanding that it is going to be uncut and unedited.
Now, if the guys in Utah make it explicit that they are editing the movies, then it isn't that big a deal. But if it is such that I can accidentally rent those movies without knowing they are the censored version, I might be upset.
Perhaps I did make a mistake when filling out my rebates, or didn't read the fine print. The point isn't that I didn't do anything wrong. The point is that I made a reasonable effort to follow the instructions and fill out the rebate. The point is, I have no problem filling out insurance forms, or forms for a morgtage, or forms to purchase a car, or other forms... that if I misfilled or didn't meet all the requirements, it was because the requirements were specificly obfuscated for the purpose of denying a rebate. Rebates, are by design, intended to make sure that the vast majority of people elgible for the rebate never recieve the rebate.
Now, I am not accusing them of doing anything illegal. I respect their legal right to issue rebates. But if the purpose of rebates is to lure people into thinking they are getting a discount and then figuring out ways not to give them the money (if this wasn't the case, they could just offer an immediate discount on an item), then that reflects badly on a store that offers rebates. It is a shady, dishonest practice. It might meet the strict legal definitions of what is legal, but it is a disreputable practice regardless.
When Office Max uses rebates to market products, I associate them with a shady, disreputable practice. Office Max may upset the less than 5% percent who actually manage to properly get rebates by getting rid of rebates in their stores, but it earns them respect with the 95% of the people like me who dislike rebates.
Now, once again, don't get me wrong, I don't think rebates should be illegal... if you like rebate programs, good for you. What I am saying is that I will spend money in a non-rebate store vs. a rebate store if I have a choice. And in the free market, that means that some stores will cater to my preferences.
This is just part of a larger ideological change toward authoritarianism. From cities banning smoking anywhere in the city (not just public places), from people wanting to tax soda and fast foods to discourage their consumption, to people wanting to ban cold medicine because it can be used to make crystal meth, to people wanting to restrict video games, to laws restricting pornography and "hateful speech", to laws that require you to wear seat belts and helmets on motorcycles, to laws that say what formats can be played on digital music players, to gun control, to police checkpoints for sobriety... Since the end of the cold war Western society has kind of abandoned the old school liberal "live and let live" philosophy for one where we want a central authority to use force to solve all our problems. Now that there isn't a big evil empire to judge ourself against we are adopting the same police-state mentality that we were fighting against during the cold war.
So a school wants to be able to check out people's cell phone records. Well, so what? The IRS is already entitled to records of all your financial transactions, and you must be able to supply it on demand or go to jail. The FBI can already wiretap you without a warrent in "national security" issues. The U.S. has already abandoned large parts of the Bill of Rights ("campaign finance reform" restrictions on speech, gun control, seizing assets of suspected drug dealers without a trial)... and most of the police state tactics are just as popular elsewhere in North America and Western Europe as in the United States.
This is not about cell phones... this is part of a bigger pattern of authoritarianism. The trouble is nearly all people support some sort of police state tactics - They may feel drugs should be legalized (good!), but then they want guns banned (bad!)... they feel gays should be allowed to marry, adopt kids, and be entitled to the same rights as everyone else (good!), but then they want to ban speech that gays might find "hateful or offensive" (bad!). They want the U.S. military to stop occupying Iraq (good!), but they want the U.S. military to occupy New Orleans (bad!). They want to stop the FBI from seizing people's financial records without warrent in order to hunt "terrorists" (good!), but then they want the IRS to seize people's financial records without warrent to tax for the welfare state (bad!). Nearly everyone has a set of issues or behavior that they want to see the iron fist of the government come crashing down on. Nearly everyone has a few issues that they are rabidly authoritarian about. And, as a democratic compromise, we get all the most reactionary authoritarian policies of each person's political views implemented as the policies of state.
Everyone will pay a higher sale price, that is true. However, you are forgetting another problem with rebates:
Even if you mail in your rebate, it is very likely you will recieve nothing. I have probably mailed in about 5 rebates in my life, and out of those 5 rebates I didn't recieve a single check. As far as I am concerned, rebates are a total scam.
Even though the manufacterer of the product issues rebates usually, Office Max fields the complaints when they don't arrive. People are going to be pissed off at Office Max, not whatever brand is issuing the rebate.
From Office Max's perspective, it could very well not be worth having rebates in the store. And remember, rebates are not being banned. You can still shop at another store that issues rebates.
Uh, by that logic, the Nazis were "just following orders".
Bad analogy... saying that Western Union is guilty of aiding the U.S. government because it follows anti-terrorism laws is like saying that the Jews were guilty of aiding the Nazis because they followed Nazi orders in labor camps. After all, the Jews were most certainly "just following orders".
Western Union is a victim, because they are spending millions of dollars enforcing these policies, and losing millions of dollars from potential customers. No company wants to throw money away. If Western Union does not follow these laws, the people responsible in the company will GO TO JAIL!!
You know a company is starting to jump the shark when they start to harrass or restrict their own customers. If ebay is restricting Google payments, it is because they know everyone is going to abandon PayPal for Google Payments. If they are restricting the product, it is because they believe that the other product is clearly superior to theirs and they are trying to hang on a little longer in a last ditch effort to keep customers from leaving!
People who sell a product should know that when you try to force or compel or threaten a customer to do something, it is because your product sucks... and eventually (unless you get the government to act on your behalf), you are going to lose those customers.
PayPal is a horrible service... and it has only continued to have customers because it requires vast amount of capital in order to compete with a financial service like that, so there hasn't been a lot of competition. As soon as there is competition, PayPal will either lose all it's market share, or have to make a bunch of very expensive changes to stay competitive.
Should this ad be censored? No, absolutly not. Is it an aweful ad? Yes.
I know a lot of fanboys and apoligists will be talking about how the "black and white is supposed to represent the yin and yang duality, blah, blah, blah". Who cares? This is an ad for a video game system, that doesn't show the video game system, and doesn't show any games, and isn't fun in any way. You could remove the PSP copy and replace it with "Calvin Klein: Domination - A new fragrance for women." and it wouldn't look out of place. It is like they took a stock photo from the "Provocative Advertising Images Collection " and slapped their copy on top.
Seriously, this ad is more for some wanker ad agency creative director to show how "edgy" he is with some subtle race baiting that will cause controversy and "buzz", but has plausible deniability ("I didn't know people would interpret it as racist").
Of course, the idea that the racial connotations are accidental is fantasy. Ad agencies always test those ads with focus groups, and run it through a battery of lawyers and people who's job is to specificly make sure nothing racist or hateful can be interpreted from the ads. They had every intention of making something that some people would find racist. Advertising is an industry - it has nothing at all to do with art or expression.
Look, if your art gallery wants to create a series of provocative images that "challenge the idea of color and race" and want to argue it is art, OK I might buy that. Even if this ad was for something like a clothing designer, or perfume, or something fashion related I might say "OK, sure". But for a consumer electronic device, one that children represent a large portion of the customers, to use race baiting as a blatent attempt to gain publicity is just sleazy and lame!
OK, so now instead of fast forwarding through commercials on my DVR, I just go back to flipping to another channel while commercials are on! Brilliant ABC!
Actually, there are probably more game companies and more new games being made than ever before.
The difference is, a game that was made by a handful of people and sold 10,000 copies was considered a "sucess" back in the day, where as a game created by a handful of people that sells 10,000 copies is considered a "hobby" nowadays.
But in terms of making a game and selling comparible to old school game sales, that has never been easier than today, and there has never been so many small independent little game companies producing games. We are really seeing the golden age of the small independent developer.
The big budget AAA title console games and blockbuster PC games are dominated by a handful of large companies, but then again the big budget AAA titles didn't exist back in the way as they do now.
This is the U.S. government's fault. The U.S. government and the U.S. Treasury department create a whole bunch of "anti-terrorism" rules with some pretty extreme penalties for non-compliance. Western Union is simply complying with a bunch of bad regulations.
The real problem is that people don't understand that there will be lots of unintended consequences to any legislation or regulations. ALL regulation or legislation hurts innocent people to some extent. People love to scream for laws and regulation to solve all the worlds problems, without ever dreaming that the laws or regulations can cause more harm than good. People have absolute faith in laws to do what they are intended and only what they are intended.
That, and people think it is the government's job to protect them from every single possible thing that can harm them (from terrorists, or iTunes DRM, or corn sweeteners, or whatever people are making hysterical calls for legislation on). In this case, the cost of having a free society where people aren't profiled by race or religion, is that it might be easier for a terrorist to attack the U.S. If you are one of those people screaming for the government to do more to stop terrorism, you are responsible for this. If you are one of the people crying "Bush didn't do enough to stop 9/11 and terrorism", then you especially guilty of supporting racial profiling (even if you claim not to support it), because how the hell else is anyone supposed to stop a crime BEFORE IT HAPPENS unless they are profiling potential criminals?
Western Union is just the innocent victim of the laws and policies that you most likely support!
You show me where that has happened that didn't involve fraud and we'll talk again.
SOX is too new for there to be a big long history about it. But let me refer you to a book that will list more examples (all properly researched) than I could ever hope to produce from a quick google search on people convicted on similiar laws.
I am giving you links to reviews of the book from two clearly non-libertarian more scholarly sources, just so you don't complain that is it "Just Libertarian Propoganda". I highly suggest you read the book, even if you disagree with the premise.
Re:Whats so bad about Peace, Love and Sarbanes-Oxl
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Enron's Kenneth Lay Dies
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· Score: 2, Interesting
PUBLIC CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE!!!!11!!!!
No, but people go to jail if they don't comply with SOX. People ARE people. And people are going to be sent to jail, not because they lied about how much money their company mankes, but because they can't prove that they didn't lie about how much money their company makes.
People should NEVER, EVER, EVER, have to prove their innocence! That is not the way laws are supposed to work! Innocent until proven guilty is supposed to be how the law works, even for people who work for comporations!
I'll not touch your liberaltarian ranting that follows...I hear they're infectious.
You won't touch my "libertarian ranting" because you know it is true, and there is no arguement you can make. Overly complicated and overly vauge regulation, which is open to widely different interpretations, leads to a situation where the law can be used to harrass people for political reasons. And trust me, it is not going to be the "Big Evil Corporations" who are going to be the ones stung. You are living in a country where the Patriot Act is being used as a tool to go after local drug dealers, and the RICO act is being used to convict people in absentia for running online casinos IN COUNTRIES WHERE IT IS PERFECTLY LEGAL! You know damn well that the government is going to have a field day with this, and lots of people are going to go to jail on some SOX technicality after they speak out against the president, or donate a lot of money to the losing candidate in an election, or when the president decides to reward a friends company by taking out the competition (ever hear of Halburton?).
Duhhh. Isn't that what all laws and regulations do? It's basically saying, "We think that you're a law-abiding citizen, but we don't want you to do X. In fact, we don't want you to do X so much that, if you do X, here's what we're going to do to you."
It is one thing to say "you can't do this, or you will be punished", but another thing to say "even if you are innocent, you must prove that you are innocent using the means we specify, otherwise you will be punished as if you are guilty".
You are ignoring the questions I asked. The government wants to stop rape. It demands all citizens must give a DNA sample to a government database. If you don't give a sample, you will be assumed to be guilty of rape (after all, why would you have a problem giving a DNA sample if you are not a rapist). Would you have a problem with a law like that? Well, SOX is the same thing, except the way you prove your innocence under SOX is a convoluted system that only lawyers and accountants that specialize in such things kinda understand.
Or do you want anarchy? In our society that is rapidly becoming totalitarian, nearly everything that isn't totalitarian will appear anarchist by contrast.
Re:Whats so bad about Peace, Love and Sarbanes-Oxl
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Enron's Kenneth Lay Dies
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· Score: 1, Insightful
The trouble is that Sarbanes-Oxley puts restrictions on law abiding citizens never implicated in crimes.
I mean, we all want to stop rape, right? How about we make a law requiring you to provide your DNA to a government database so they can catch rapists. After all, if you are not a rapist, what do you have to worry about?
We all want to stop illegal drugs from harming people. How about we have random drug testing for all citizens. The police will select random names from a voting database or DMV records or something, and give them all drug tests. If you test postive, you go to jail. If you don't take the test, you go to jail. Sound reasonable?
We all want to stop terrorism. How about requiring that police search every residence once a month. Nothing harmfull with that, you have nothing to worry about if you are not a terrorist, right?
While there is nothing wrong with creating laws to punish people guilty of theft and fraud, there are big problems with creating a system where everyone must prove their innocence on a regular basis or be considered guilty. Especially, like in the Sarbanes-Oxley, it is a series of vauge rules that are very difficult to comply with and can be arbitrarily enforced. This is more fodder for the government to go after it's critics, or to demand political donations as protection money for non-enforcement, or to help a company with political connections by going after it's competitor, and the fixed costs of compliance help keep smaller buisnesses with competing with large corporations. It is not going to stop this kind of corporate crime, it is just another tool for the government to aid certain corporate criminals, and harrass other people they don't like.
Microsoft is not a human being. Although corporations are sometimes technically given the same status as a "person" for certain legal purposes (like copyright law), this is a legal abstraction and not real. Microsoft can not be "punished" like a naughty puppy.
Money is an abstraction used to medium to facilitate the exchange of goods and service based on supply and demand. It is a tool for expressing the consumer/producer relationship. If you take more pieces of paper (or bits in a computer, nowadays) from Microsoft, you are not fundamentally altering the consumer/producer relationship. Neither the demand nor the supply of the software has changed. Microsoft still demands x share of the total goods and services in the economy in exchange for it's software, nomatter how you juggle the means of exchange. Money is how we measure the relationship, but it is not the relationship itself.
Microsoft, being at the top of the OS market, will simply add the costs of the fines to the price they charge for their OS. It is not like having to sell a version of Windows without Windows Media Player is seriously going to cut into their bottom line. The consumers of Europe are going to pay this fine in the form of higher software costs (both from Microsoft which will recoup the costs in the software price, and Microsoft's competitors who will have less incentive to lower their price if Microsoft is charging more).
This "fine" is simply a tax on European consumers. It is a way for the EU to allocate a larger share of the total goods and services in the economy, and at the same time posturing that they are somehow "helping" Europeans.
Slashdot Mirror
You are speaking under the assumption that legalized gambling is "immoral". It may be "wrong" for the "Right" to pretend to be against online gambling, but there is absolutly nothing wrong with U.S. companies running gambling websites. People have the right to do whatever they want with their money, so long as they aren't doing physical harm to others. Even assuming that gambling is somehow "bad" for society (which it isn't), better that people gamble legaly in the safety on an online casino than in some back room "casino" run by criminals.
While it is disgusting if the "Right" is pretending to be against gambling, if in fact that is what they are doing... if the conspiracy theory that the "Right" really does support legalized gambling is true like you say it is, then I would much rather support the hypocritical right who will eventually legalize gambling than the paternalistic authoritarian left who are geniune in their moralistic crusade to control people's lives.
Now, don't get me wrong, I believe the "Right" are as genuine facists as the "Left", and both truly want to ban gambling for moral reasons (for the Right, because gambling is a "sin", for the left because gambling is "capitalistic")... but if your conspiracy theory is true, and the Right are really secretly closet libertarians, then that would make the Right the guys that I want to support over the Left.
In terms of online gaming, the U.S. has tried to do what you mentioned, and is usually told in more legalistic terms to fuck off. In the same way the U.S. wouldn't extradite Yahoo employees or hand over Yahoo's U.S. assets to China if Yahoo happened to violate Chinese censorship laws, in countries where online casinos are perfectly legal, there is no way they are going to shut down that revenue source.
You might have taken legal action against a foriegn company for something that was illegal in both countries, but short of the U.S. threatening assasination/economic sanctions/military invasion or various other sorts of brute intimidation, no soveriegn country is going to destroy a perfectly legal industry just because the U.S. asks nicely.
Except that all economic exchange is balanced! What do you think those countries are going to do with the American dollars they get from gambling? American dollars are no longer redeemable for gold (the gold standard disapeared a long time ago), which means they are going to use those dollars to purchase American goods and services, or trade those dollars to others who want to purchase American goods and services.
"Trade" literally means trade... as in they send us stuff we want, and we send them stuff that they want (or we send them a promise to give them even more stuff they want in the future). We trade for it. Get it? Money is just a means of exchange to facilitate the exchange of goods and services.
The U.S. trade deficit exists because the U.S. is borrowing insane amounts of money to spend on consumer goods (or the government is doing it on our behalf). The U.S. trade deficit isn't a problem we have with other countries, so much as it is the suicidal economic behavior of Americans. Instead of trading stuff they want for stuff we want, the U.S. is trading the promise for lots and lots of stuff they want in the future, for stuff we want now. If Americans and America weren't loaded with debt, trade between the U.S. and other countries would be relatively balanced.
What I don't understand is... why is gambling deemed such a big deal in the USA? You allow people to drink, smoke, carry guns and prostitute themselves (in some states, at least), but not to bet on certain outcomes. It just seems really bizarre to me, particularly when you allow betting on other outcomes, such as dabbling in the financial markets.
Drinking, and smoking are illegal to do in most public places... guns are vitually banned except in a handful of places, and prostitution is only legal in one county in Nevada. And "gambling" on the stock market - well the SEC is doing all it can to heavily restrict that too. All in all, the U.S. is pretty damn authoritarian.
Now, if you are a European or Canadian, don't get smug. Most of those places are outright authoritarian in their own way - it is just that they never prided themselves on being "the land of the free", so it isn't as ironic when they are oppressive.
Choose a reason why gambling "should" be illegal, depending on your point of view:
1. Gambling is a sin, and it is the government's job to enforce god's laws, you miserable sinner!
2. Gambling is capitalist exploitation, and it is the job of the state to protect the proletariat from counter-revolutionary moral influences!
Ultimatly, all bans on gambling usually come down to one of these reasons, even if the rhetoric is a bit watered down to make it seem "reasonable" to the electorate.
These laws aren't supposed to "protect" the casual gambler... the casual gambler isn't going to gamble online because it is boring. They rather bet with their friends on the big game, or gamble during the weekly poker game.
These laws are (in rhetoric) to protect the chronic gambler from betting away his children's college fund. That kind of guy can easily get around this law.
Therefore, this law doesn't have any positive moral effects whatsoever (assuming it is even the job of the government to babysit all its citizens)... it doesn't stop online gambling at all. And everyone, including the law makers, know that. Not only that, but online casinos were pretty much illegal before this law.
What this law does is set the precendent that even linking to a site can be a crime. Linking to an "illegal" (illegal being used loosly, as these online casinos are absolutly 100% legal in the countries they are run!) sites is now a crime. Once this law is challenged and then held up in courts, expect all kinds of laws regulating who and what you can link to!
Laws shouldn't be about whether they are popular or not, *OR* desirable or not. Laws should be about protecting individuals from direct unwanted harm caused by others... or to maintain the general peace.
Since none of this gambling is involuntary, and none of it fails the "does it scare the horses" test of maintaining the peace, there shouldn't even be debate about banning online gambling in a free and democratic society, any more than there should be a debate about slavery or censorship in a free society. Laws like this deserve nothing but scorn from free people in what is supposed to be a democratic society.
No, when you watch a movie on TV there is an implicit understanding that they may have to cut it down to add commercials / fit in time slot etc. (in fact, all the movies I have watched on TV recently have included a notice at the begining of the movie explicitly saying that it has been edited to fit on the screen and for time).. But when I purchase or rent something on DVD, I do it with the implicit understanding that it is going to be uncut and unedited.
Now, if the guys in Utah make it explicit that they are editing the movies, then it isn't that big a deal. But if it is such that I can accidentally rent those movies without knowing they are the censored version, I might be upset.
Perhaps I did make a mistake when filling out my rebates, or didn't read the fine print. The point isn't that I didn't do anything wrong. The point is that I made a reasonable effort to follow the instructions and fill out the rebate. The point is, I have no problem filling out insurance forms, or forms for a morgtage, or forms to purchase a car, or other forms... that if I misfilled or didn't meet all the requirements, it was because the requirements were specificly obfuscated for the purpose of denying a rebate. Rebates, are by design, intended to make sure that the vast majority of people elgible for the rebate never recieve the rebate.
Now, I am not accusing them of doing anything illegal. I respect their legal right to issue rebates. But if the purpose of rebates is to lure people into thinking they are getting a discount and then figuring out ways not to give them the money (if this wasn't the case, they could just offer an immediate discount on an item), then that reflects badly on a store that offers rebates. It is a shady, dishonest practice. It might meet the strict legal definitions of what is legal, but it is a disreputable practice regardless.
When Office Max uses rebates to market products, I associate them with a shady, disreputable practice. Office Max may upset the less than 5% percent who actually manage to properly get rebates by getting rid of rebates in their stores, but it earns them respect with the 95% of the people like me who dislike rebates.
Now, once again, don't get me wrong, I don't think rebates should be illegal... if you like rebate programs, good for you. What I am saying is that I will spend money in a non-rebate store vs. a rebate store if I have a choice. And in the free market, that means that some stores will cater to my preferences.
This is just part of a larger ideological change toward authoritarianism. From cities banning smoking anywhere in the city (not just public places), from people wanting to tax soda and fast foods to discourage their consumption, to people wanting to ban cold medicine because it can be used to make crystal meth, to people wanting to restrict video games, to laws restricting pornography and "hateful speech", to laws that require you to wear seat belts and helmets on motorcycles, to laws that say what formats can be played on digital music players, to gun control, to police checkpoints for sobriety... Since the end of the cold war Western society has kind of abandoned the old school liberal "live and let live" philosophy for one where we want a central authority to use force to solve all our problems. Now that there isn't a big evil empire to judge ourself against we are adopting the same police-state mentality that we were fighting against during the cold war.
So a school wants to be able to check out people's cell phone records. Well, so what? The IRS is already entitled to records of all your financial transactions, and you must be able to supply it on demand or go to jail. The FBI can already wiretap you without a warrent in "national security" issues. The U.S. has already abandoned large parts of the Bill of Rights ("campaign finance reform" restrictions on speech, gun control, seizing assets of suspected drug dealers without a trial)... and most of the police state tactics are just as popular elsewhere in North America and Western Europe as in the United States.
This is not about cell phones... this is part of a bigger pattern of authoritarianism. The trouble is nearly all people support some sort of police state tactics - They may feel drugs should be legalized (good!), but then they want guns banned (bad!)... they feel gays should be allowed to marry, adopt kids, and be entitled to the same rights as everyone else (good!), but then they want to ban speech that gays might find "hateful or offensive" (bad!). They want the U.S. military to stop occupying Iraq (good!), but they want the U.S. military to occupy New Orleans (bad!). They want to stop the FBI from seizing people's financial records without warrent in order to hunt "terrorists" (good!), but then they want the IRS to seize people's financial records without warrent to tax for the welfare state (bad!). Nearly everyone has a set of issues or behavior that they want to see the iron fist of the government come crashing down on. Nearly everyone has a few issues that they are rabidly authoritarian about. And, as a democratic compromise, we get all the most reactionary authoritarian policies of each person's political views implemented as the policies of state.
Everyone will pay a higher sale price, that is true. However, you are forgetting another problem with rebates:
Even if you mail in your rebate, it is very likely you will recieve nothing. I have probably mailed in about 5 rebates in my life, and out of those 5 rebates I didn't recieve a single check. As far as I am concerned, rebates are a total scam.
Even though the manufacterer of the product issues rebates usually, Office Max fields the complaints when they don't arrive. People are going to be pissed off at Office Max, not whatever brand is issuing the rebate.
From Office Max's perspective, it could very well not be worth having rebates in the store. And remember, rebates are not being banned. You can still shop at another store that issues rebates.
Uh, by that logic, the Nazis were "just following orders".
Bad analogy... saying that Western Union is guilty of aiding the U.S. government because it follows anti-terrorism laws is like saying that the Jews were guilty of aiding the Nazis because they followed Nazi orders in labor camps. After all, the Jews were most certainly "just following orders".
Western Union is a victim, because they are spending millions of dollars enforcing these policies, and losing millions of dollars from potential customers. No company wants to throw money away. If Western Union does not follow these laws, the people responsible in the company will GO TO JAIL!!
If you had ever spent any time as a toad, you wouldn't be so quick to dismiss witchcraft like that!
I think they are going to have a hard time syncing their commercials to when I press play on the DVR! :)
You know a company is starting to jump the shark when they start to harrass or restrict their own customers. If ebay is restricting Google payments, it is because they know everyone is going to abandon PayPal for Google Payments. If they are restricting the product, it is because they believe that the other product is clearly superior to theirs and they are trying to hang on a little longer in a last ditch effort to keep customers from leaving!
People who sell a product should know that when you try to force or compel or threaten a customer to do something, it is because your product sucks... and eventually (unless you get the government to act on your behalf), you are going to lose those customers.
PayPal is a horrible service... and it has only continued to have customers because it requires vast amount of capital in order to compete with a financial service like that, so there hasn't been a lot of competition. As soon as there is competition, PayPal will either lose all it's market share, or have to make a bunch of very expensive changes to stay competitive.
Should this ad be censored? No, absolutly not. Is it an aweful ad? Yes.
I know a lot of fanboys and apoligists will be talking about how the "black and white is supposed to represent the yin and yang duality, blah, blah, blah". Who cares? This is an ad for a video game system, that doesn't show the video game system, and doesn't show any games, and isn't fun in any way. You could remove the PSP copy and replace it with "Calvin Klein: Domination - A new fragrance for women." and it wouldn't look out of place. It is like they took a stock photo from the "Provocative Advertising Images Collection " and slapped their copy on top.
Seriously, this ad is more for some wanker ad agency creative director to show how "edgy" he is with some subtle race baiting that will cause controversy and "buzz", but has plausible deniability ("I didn't know people would interpret it as racist").
Of course, the idea that the racial connotations are accidental is fantasy. Ad agencies always test those ads with focus groups, and run it through a battery of lawyers and people who's job is to specificly make sure nothing racist or hateful can be interpreted from the ads. They had every intention of making something that some people would find racist. Advertising is an industry - it has nothing at all to do with art or expression.
Look, if your art gallery wants to create a series of provocative images that "challenge the idea of color and race" and want to argue it is art, OK I might buy that. Even if this ad was for something like a clothing designer, or perfume, or something fashion related I might say "OK, sure". But for a consumer electronic device, one that children represent a large portion of the customers, to use race baiting as a blatent attempt to gain publicity is just sleazy and lame!
OK, so now instead of fast forwarding through commercials on my DVR, I just go back to flipping to another channel while commercials are on! Brilliant ABC!
Actually, there are probably more game companies and more new games being made than ever before.
The difference is, a game that was made by a handful of people and sold 10,000 copies was considered a "sucess" back in the day, where as a game created by a handful of people that sells 10,000 copies is considered a "hobby" nowadays.
But in terms of making a game and selling comparible to old school game sales, that has never been easier than today, and there has never been so many small independent little game companies producing games. We are really seeing the golden age of the small independent developer.
The big budget AAA title console games and blockbuster PC games are dominated by a handful of large companies, but then again the big budget AAA titles didn't exist back in the way as they do now.
So the market hasn't been condensing at all.
This is the U.S. government's fault. The U.S. government and the U.S. Treasury department create a whole bunch of "anti-terrorism" rules with some pretty extreme penalties for non-compliance. Western Union is simply complying with a bunch of bad regulations.
The real problem is that people don't understand that there will be lots of unintended consequences to any legislation or regulations. ALL regulation or legislation hurts innocent people to some extent. People love to scream for laws and regulation to solve all the worlds problems, without ever dreaming that the laws or regulations can cause more harm than good. People have absolute faith in laws to do what they are intended and only what they are intended.
That, and people think it is the government's job to protect them from every single possible thing that can harm them (from terrorists, or iTunes DRM, or corn sweeteners, or whatever people are making hysterical calls for legislation on). In this case, the cost of having a free society where people aren't profiled by race or religion, is that it might be easier for a terrorist to attack the U.S. If you are one of those people screaming for the government to do more to stop terrorism, you are responsible for this. If you are one of the people crying "Bush didn't do enough to stop 9/11 and terrorism", then you especially guilty of supporting racial profiling (even if you claim not to support it), because how the hell else is anyone supposed to stop a crime BEFORE IT HAPPENS unless they are profiling potential criminals?
Western Union is just the innocent victim of the laws and policies that you most likely support!
You show me where that has happened that didn't involve fraud and we'll talk again.
y -news-issue.asp?id=2243s /healy305.htm
SOX is too new for there to be a big long history about it. But let me refer you to a book that will list more examples (all properly researched) than I could ever hope to produce from a quick google search on people convicted on similiar laws.
I am giving you links to reviews of the book from two clearly non-libertarian more scholarly sources, just so you don't complain that is it "Just Libertarian Propoganda". I highly suggest you read the book, even if you disagree with the premise.
http://www.nhbar.org/publications/archives/displa
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/review
PUBLIC CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE!!!!11!!!!
No, but people go to jail if they don't comply with SOX. People ARE people. And people are going to be sent to jail, not because they lied about how much money their company mankes, but because they can't prove that they didn't lie about how much money their company makes.
People should NEVER, EVER, EVER, have to prove their innocence! That is not the way laws are supposed to work! Innocent until proven guilty is supposed to be how the law works, even for people who work for comporations!
I'll not touch your liberaltarian ranting that follows...I hear they're infectious.
You won't touch my "libertarian ranting" because you know it is true, and there is no arguement you can make. Overly complicated and overly vauge regulation, which is open to widely different interpretations, leads to a situation where the law can be used to harrass people for political reasons. And trust me, it is not going to be the "Big Evil Corporations" who are going to be the ones stung. You are living in a country where the Patriot Act is being used as a tool to go after local drug dealers, and the RICO act is being used to convict people in absentia for running online casinos IN COUNTRIES WHERE IT IS PERFECTLY LEGAL! You know damn well that the government is going to have a field day with this, and lots of people are going to go to jail on some SOX technicality after they speak out against the president, or donate a lot of money to the losing candidate in an election, or when the president decides to reward a friends company by taking out the competition (ever hear of Halburton?).
Duhhh. Isn't that what all laws and regulations do? It's basically saying, "We think that you're a law-abiding citizen, but we don't want you to do X. In fact, we don't want you to do X so much that, if you do X, here's what we're going to do to you."
It is one thing to say "you can't do this, or you will be punished", but another thing to say "even if you are innocent, you must prove that you are innocent using the means we specify, otherwise you will be punished as if you are guilty".
You are ignoring the questions I asked. The government wants to stop rape. It demands all citizens must give a DNA sample to a government database. If you don't give a sample, you will be assumed to be guilty of rape (after all, why would you have a problem giving a DNA sample if you are not a rapist). Would you have a problem with a law like that? Well, SOX is the same thing, except the way you prove your innocence under SOX is a convoluted system that only lawyers and accountants that specialize in such things kinda understand.
Or do you want anarchy?
In our society that is rapidly becoming totalitarian, nearly everything that isn't totalitarian will appear anarchist by contrast.
The trouble is that Sarbanes-Oxley puts restrictions on law abiding citizens never implicated in crimes.
I mean, we all want to stop rape, right? How about we make a law requiring you to provide your DNA to a government database so they can catch rapists. After all, if you are not a rapist, what do you have to worry about?
We all want to stop illegal drugs from harming people. How about we have random drug testing for all citizens. The police will select random names from a voting database or DMV records or something, and give them all drug tests. If you test postive, you go to jail. If you don't take the test, you go to jail. Sound reasonable?
We all want to stop terrorism. How about requiring that police search every residence once a month. Nothing harmfull with that, you have nothing to worry about if you are not a terrorist, right?
While there is nothing wrong with creating laws to punish people guilty of theft and fraud, there are big problems with creating a system where everyone must prove their innocence on a regular basis or be considered guilty. Especially, like in the Sarbanes-Oxley, it is a series of vauge rules that are very difficult to comply with and can be arbitrarily enforced. This is more fodder for the government to go after it's critics, or to demand political donations as protection money for non-enforcement, or to help a company with political connections by going after it's competitor, and the fixed costs of compliance help keep smaller buisnesses with competing with large corporations. It is not going to stop this kind of corporate crime, it is just another tool for the government to aid certain corporate criminals, and harrass other people they don't like.
Yes... I was terrified having that man out on the streets! Now me and my family can sleep safe!
Microsoft is not a human being. Although corporations are sometimes technically given the same status as a "person" for certain legal purposes (like copyright law), this is a legal abstraction and not real. Microsoft can not be "punished" like a naughty puppy.
Money is an abstraction used to medium to facilitate the exchange of goods and service based on supply and demand. It is a tool for expressing the consumer/producer relationship. If you take more pieces of paper (or bits in a computer, nowadays) from Microsoft, you are not fundamentally altering the consumer/producer relationship. Neither the demand nor the supply of the software has changed. Microsoft still demands x share of the total goods and services in the economy in exchange for it's software, nomatter how you juggle the means of exchange. Money is how we measure the relationship, but it is not the relationship itself.
Microsoft, being at the top of the OS market, will simply add the costs of the fines to the price they charge for their OS. It is not like having to sell a version of Windows without Windows Media Player is seriously going to cut into their bottom line. The consumers of Europe are going to pay this fine in the form of higher software costs (both from Microsoft which will recoup the costs in the software price, and Microsoft's competitors who will have less incentive to lower their price if Microsoft is charging more).
This "fine" is simply a tax on European consumers. It is a way for the EU to allocate a larger share of the total goods and services in the economy, and at the same time posturing that they are somehow "helping" Europeans.