Corporate evil

[HanoiVillan]

11 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Tbh, their defence is quite compelling, and from the latimes article linked in the thread, the indictment of the IRS supports something like this being started up. There's a staggering stat that they only ever answer about a quarter of their calls. The suggestion that this company 'created' the problem is clearly false, and the labelling of it as a "DDoS" only makes sense if there's a reason to believe that they're causing even a significant amount of the calls to the line.

Here's a post about their stats from CallEnq in 2017, they claim to have called the IRS 10,000 times between April 2016 and April 2017. That sounds like a lot, but the IRS recieves around 100m calls a year. that 10,000 miught have ramped up a lot since 2017, but I find it hard to believe they're anything but a drop in the bucket.

It sounds outrageous on the face of it, that's Doctorow's whole schtick, but dig a little deeper and it doesn't seem that much of a story to me. 

 

The reason the IRS only answers a tiny proportion of the calls faced is that its budget has been cut dramatically, by about 20% in inflation-adjusted dollars since 2010, leading it lose more than 20% of its workforce, at a time when the American population has grown significantly and the complexity of taxes has increased. The thread acknowledges that this service - which to be clear, is just ticket-touting for calling the tax office - hasn't caused the problem, but it can only possibly exacerbate it, and unless the CEO plans to shutter the company if the IRS reaches a target of calls answered, then whether it is having much negative impact *now* is kind of irrelevant, because it will simply do so in the future instead.

The solution to poor public services is and always will be to fund them and run them properly, not to provide queue-jumping opportunities for the rich or connected.

[Davkaus]

Just now, HanoiVillan said:

The thread acknowledges that this service - which to be clear, is just ticket-touting for calling the tax office - hasn't caused the problem, but it can only possibly exacerbate it,

 

It does, but then it goes on to say "that they created", which is the bit I take issue with.

Quote

The solution to poor public services is and always will be to fund them and run them properly, not to provide queue-jumping opportunities for the rich or connected.

Couldn't agree more. But while that isn't happening I'm not sure I blame people for offering a service to get around it. If it was how Doctorow was trying to spin it (a "DDoS", "that they created", "Ransomeware"), I'd have a much bigger problem with it and it clearly ought to be illegal, but if it's actually just a tiny proportion of the calls that allow people to pay to skip the queue, I don't really like it, but the department ought to be funded sufficiently enough to put this organisation out of business.

[HanoiVillan]

3 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

... while that isn't happening I'm not sure I blame people for offering a service to get around it. If it was how Doctorow was trying to spin it (a "DDoS", "that they created", "Ransomeware"), I'd have a much bigger problem with it and it clearly ought to be illegal, but if it's actually just a tiny proportion of the calls that allow people to pay to skip the queue, I don't really like it, but the department ought to be funded sufficiently enough to put this organisation out of business.

You're creating a distinction in scale between small ('not sure I blame people for offering a service . . . I don't really like it') and large ('I'd have a much bigger problem with it and it clearly ought to be illegal') that doesn't exist in reality. If the company makes money, is it going to a] invest more in calling more frequently to support more clients, or b] stop doing something anti-social and do something else? Well it's obviously a] isn't it. There is no plan listed on the company's website to stop doing this, and you can't really have a law which says 'well I guess it's okay as long as they don't do it too much but if they grow it should be clearly illegal'.

[Davkaus]

Of course you can, there's nothing to stop phone-based DDoS from being defined in law if it isn't already.

Having your paid secretary call up and pass it through once the line is clear clearly shouldn't be illegal. Spamming them with millions of calls so that nobody can get through without using this service clearly ought to be illegal. Where the line ought to be drawn is a matter of debate, but it's no more an impossible task to draw distinction than it's impossible to define speed limits. It seems to me that this service is closer to the former than the latter, though this is based on just a few minutes of research of publicly available info, so I might be well off and they're actually creating significant delays for others.

Edited October 7, 2021 by Davkaus

[HanoiVillan]

1 minute ago, Davkaus said:

Of course you can, there's nothing to stop phone-based DDoS from being defined in law if it isn't already.

Having your paid secretary call up and pass it through once the line is clear clearly shouldn't be illegal. Spamming them with millions of calls so that nobody can get through without using this service clearly ought to be illegal. Where the line ought to be drawn is a matter of debate, but it's no more an impossible to draw distinction than it's impossible to define speed limits. It seems to me that this service is closer to the former than the latter, though this is based on just a few minutes of research of publicly available info, so I might be well off and they're actually creating significant delays for others.

No, that's a difference in kind, not degree. Your secretary isn't doing it for profit. In the same way, I can buy two tickets to a popular concert if I know my friend wants one, but if I start buying them and selling them for profit that's ticket touting.

[sne]

Quote

Special Report: Amazon partnered with China propaganda arm

Amazon.com Inc was marketing a collection of President Xi Jinping's speeches and writings on its Chinese website about two years ago, when Beijing delivered an edict, according to two people familiar with the incident. The American e-commerce giant must stop allowing any customer ratings and reviews in China. 

Amazon's compliance with the Chinese government edict, which has not been reported before, is part of a deeper, decade-long effort by the company to win favor in Beijing to protect and grow its business in one of the world's largest marketplaces.

An internal 2018 Amazon briefing document that describes the company's China business lays out a number of "Core Issues" the Seattle-based giant has faced in the country. Among them: "Ideological control and propaganda is the core of the toolkit for the communist party to achieve and maintain its success," the document notes. "We are not making judgement on whether it is right or wrong."

That briefing document, and interviews with more than two dozen people who have been involved in Amazon's China operation, reveal how the company has survived and thrived in China by helping to further the ruling Communist Party's global economic and political agenda, while at times pushing back on some government demands.

In a core element of this strategy, the internal document and interviews show, Amazon partnered with an arm of China's propaganda apparatus to create a selling portal on the company's U.S. site, Amazon.com – a project that came to be known as China Books. The venture – which eventually offered more than 90,000 publications for sale – hasn't generated significant revenue. But the document shows that it was seen by Amazon as crucial to winning support in China as the company grew its Kindle electronic-book device, cloud-computing and e-commerce businesses.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/amazon-partnered-with-china-propaganda-arm-win-beijings-favor-document-shows-2021-12-17/

[OutByEaster?]

So, free market capitalism works because companies compete for market share and the competition drives product development and creates the best deal for consumers because companies have to compete on price to attract them - that's the principle right?

Except the reality is that when energy companies who are making record levels of profit realise that the market and the economy won't support the prices they'd like to charge, then their lobbyists simply get onto a government they've helped fund and manage and somehow arrange a system whereby their profit is maintained anyway.

Consumers are charged a price they cannot afford and in order to help make up the deficit, government gives the energy companies the difference directly from the public purse - so Joe Blogs who can't afford a £400 monthly gas bill pays £300 thanks to some help from Rishi Sunak - who steals £100 of Joe's income tax and gives it to the energy company directly.

Joe wonders why you can never find a policeman when you need one and why his road has so many potholes. Joe has been waiting for a knee op for two years but is soldiering on.

Joe is grateful to Rishi for helping out.

Rishi has a powerful ally in his political corner and the funds to make a shiny new video. Rishi has a non-exec director position with Shell lined up at £300k a year when he 'retires'.

The energy companies report record profits once again and pay their CEO his £80m bonus.

The government quietly withdraws that environmental policy that they'd proposed during the election because there's simply not enough money coming in from tax to pay for it and they need what they have to 'protect the NHS'.

Rishi reduces income tax to grab more votes.

The press print eight pages about a minor royal and a footballers wife, the banks that own the press and the energy companies chuckle about it.

 

We live in a crooked, criminal economic system where the people we vote for to protect us are owned by the people they're supposed to protect us from. The lobbyists that those companies employ to control our elected bodies will be responsible for the deaths of ten of thousands of people for the sake of a profitable second quarter.

Remember that when Rishi tell you how happy you should be that he's going to 'help out' with your gas bill.

 

 

[blandy]

2 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

the reality is that when energy companies who are making record levels of profit realise that the market and the economy won't support the prices they'd like to charge, then their lobbyists simply get onto a government they've helped fund and manage and somehow arrange a system whereby their profit is maintained anyway.

Just a minor point, but it’s the energy extractors raking it in. The energy distributors ( unless also extractors) are not. Indeed many went bust, as we know, because the raw energy price rose and they were not permitted to charge even cost price due to the price cap. And also because in some cases they were very badly run

[Tegis]

1 hour ago, OutByEaster? said:

So, free market capitalism works because companies compete for market share and the competition drives product development and creates the best deal for consumers because companies have to compete on price to attract them - that's the principle right?

My thinking on this is that it only works on things you can choose to not make a purchase on. Hence it absolutely craps out then you try to have a market on living necessities.

[sne]

 

[bannedfromHandV]

25 minutes ago, sne said:

 

I wonder if this will bother the plethora of 19 year old girls proudly parading the Shein clothing all over Instagram?

No, would be my assumption.

[Rds1983]

1 hour ago, bannedfromHandV said:

I wonder if this will bother the plethora of 19 year old girls proudly parading the Shein clothing all over Instagram?

No, would be my assumption.

I'm not familiar with Shein clothing. Could you forward on some links to these instagram accounts? For research purposes obviously. 

[Xann]