patrick.net

joeyjojojunior says

Anyone left who thinks this President represents the people or is the least bit Populist?

Are the democrats even saying they will drain the swamp?
Are they even trying to represent the people?
Saving the world starts with yourself.

Heraclitusstudent says

Are the democrats even saying they will drain the swamp?

I think their vote says it all. All Dems voted against this garbage bill. Actions speak a lot louder than words.

This is a bullshit issue - the Federal Arbitration Act has time and again been upheld by the Supreme Court. As long as the agreement is in plain sight and the consumer is aware of it, then there's nothing shady about it.

By your logic, no one would/could ever buy a new construction house (for example) or contract with a ton of businesses due to such agreements being standard practice.

Tip for the brainwashed leftoids: consumers can still lawyer up and pursue claims for damages, they just can't freely snipe away as part of class actions at no cost to them. Because the rampant non-meritorious nature of class actions especially against large businesses (which costs the business just to go through the motions) arbitration agreements have been deemed perfectly legal.

Democrats = business unfriendly

anonymous says

Democrats = business unfriendly

Damn straight. Except we call it consumer friendly.

Businesses are not your friend. Their entire goal is to take your money.

joeyjojojunior says

Businesses are not your friend. Their entire goal is to take your money.

Not true. I'll enjoy a kick ass restaurant and know their margins are way higher then a shittier restaurant any day of the week. No problem paying that place more. Same with a vacation. I'll also do it for convenience even though I know I'm paying more. Look at it this way, no business, no jobs. That doesn't sound like much fun to me.

One area I'd agree they're not your friend is health care. There are others, but that's an obvious one.

It's not just a binary A or B choice with regards to businesses and how you feel about them. Most businesses I support are my friend. I have no problem with them making money off my dollars. Not sure what other way you would have it.

joeyjojojunior says

Businesses are not your friend. Their entire goal is to take your money.

Nope! The purpose of a business is to provide a service to the public and thus be rewarded for that service. The better you are at providing that service, the more your customers appreciate you, and generally speaking the more money you make. If you suck at pleasing customers, you will go broke fast. There are exceptions to every rule, but this is a basic rule for business.
The only corporations I invest in are ones which have a reputation for providing valuable service to their customers. This is the only sure investment strategy out there.

Quigley says

Nope! The purpose of a business is to provide a service to the public and thus be rewarded for that service

lol--providing the service is a means to an end. making money for the owners Period.

If a business makes more money by killing people than by not killing people, it kills people. This has been proven time and time again. See Ford Pinto.

WookieMan says

Not true. I'll enjoy a kick ass restaurant and know their margins are way higher then a shittier restaurant any day of the week. No problem paying that place more

How does that contradict my statement? I agree--cheaper isn't always better. But that's completely tangent to what I said.


WookieMan says

It's not just a binary A or B choice with regards to businesses and how you feel about them. Most businesses I support are my friend. I have no problem with them making money off my dollars. Not sure what other way you would have it.

I'm fine with businesses making money off me too. But, I understand that profit motive is their reason for existing and I act accordingly.

anonymous says

Because the rampant non-meritorious nature of class actions

Wouldn't non-meritorious lawsuits be thrown out immediately? Most class action lawsuits that I see are entirely meritorious.

Heraclitusstudent says

by PCGyver in #misc   8 comments, latest 2 minutes ago

They created the CFPB which has prosecuted billions of dollars worth of bank abuses. Republicans are about to destroy that too.

Doesn't there come a time when your narrative of both parties being the same blows up?

frivolous, multi-million dollar, "i want to retire" lawsuits are anti-business.

Trump keeping campaign promises, once again.

As long as it hurts Republicans!

anonymous says

Tip for the brainwashed leftoids: consumers can still lawyer up and pursue claims for damages,

What do you suppose your local podunk lawyer's chances of prevailing against wells fargo's corporate legal team in arbitration court are? That's the point of forced arbitration.

joeyjojojunior says

How does that contradict my statement?

I guess I was taking issue with the business is not your friend line. In some/many cases, absolutely true. My health insurance provider is a cunt. If it was an individual I would kick them in the balls. I also try to avoid the likes of Walmart, Target and other big name franchises & chains (although locally owned franchises aren't all bad).

I'm near the "big city," but where I'm at, all of the businesses are locally owned. I literally am friends with many of the business owners. So I'm biased towards my local businesses and how I generally feel about business. Besides schools, it's part of the reason I live where I do, because of the types of businesses. Cue the Cheers theme song.

And of course, they all exist to make money off me the customer. But to say they're not my friend or friendly is just a bit harsh in my opinion and that was the point I was trying to make however awkwardly I did in the previous comment.

WookieMan says

But to say they're not my friend or friendly is just a bit harsh in my opinion and that was the point I was trying to make however awkwardly I did in the previous comment.

Understood. I think the term was more in general. For sure there are local small business owners that can be your friend.

Anon said: "consumers can still lawyer up and pursue claims for damages"

You obviously have never tried this. Say your damages are $2000 - so you call up a number of sympathetic lawyers who all say "I agree you have been harmed but it's as much work for me to pursue a $2000 claim as a $200,000 claimand there's no sense in you paying me $5000 retainer only to get $2000 back when u win".

However, if the lawyer has multiple clients with $2000 claims he can largely repeat his work from case to case to case and the marginal cost suddenly makes it worth it to pursue. In other words if he has 50 people with $2000 claims it's suddenly worth his time to do the work on contingency, and take 1/3 of the expected 100 K.

Most class action lawsuits are about small breeches of contract or illegal fees that can be as low as a few dollars a month. No no one is going to hire a lawyer to contest that $5 extra charge that has been appearing on his bill for the past 6 months. Class action lawsuits were the only way to make a corporation feel some pain for their misdeeds when each individual consumer pays a few dollars but the business steals millions.

This is an awful decision that doesn't make any sense.

BorderPatrol says

frivolous, multi-million dollar, "i want to retire" lawsuits are anti-business.

What if 25% are frivolous which is a stretch and assumes a massive number of corrupt judges. I don't see how anyone can believe this but maybe some people do.

So 75% of the time banks are never going to be held accountable for civil damages they are responsible for? Moreover doesn't this mean the banks are now free to repeatedly fuck the consumers with hidden charges and small frauds knowing that each individual instance isn't worth enough to take to court and that most people will simply not realize they are being overbilled?

I can't even think of a reasonable argument why this should be done other than the oft repeated claim that they are all frivolous. They are not.

Forced arbitration does not prevent or intimidate anyone from recovering damages, it just makes sure that the claimant actually has skin in the game and can take the time to prove their claim in front of a 3rd party. Contrast this to contingency based ambulance-chasing scumbag lawyers who attempt to overwhelm businesses with negative public records/press and endless litigation. Remember, it's the lawyers who always make out the best on these activities. Not the consumer.

And yes, I've personally gone through this process a number of times (dollar amounts of damages were about $12k per claim) and each of the occasions required that I coherently PROVED my claim to the consultants and representatives who were assigned to investigate. It takes MONTHS to go through. No lawyers were even necessary on my end. I got most of the money back.

Again, the Supreme Court has time and again upheld the Federal Arbitration Act. That's not going to change based on a politically motivated exception for financial institutions.

So long as all terms of sale/contract are disclosed to consumer, then there's no issue. In some cases, companies were hiding their arbitration clauses which is definitely not legal.

@Patrick - Comments 33-37 are hard to follow who is who. Well, not really. But it would make it a whole hell of a lot easier if they had anonymous_1,3,54,520 etc. at the end of anonymous or something along those lines. I know it essentially doesn't make you fully anonymous anymore in a sense. But outside of anyone that has been doxxed or doxxed themselves, we're all pretty much anonymous here. So I don't see who it would be hurting. I know IP addresses will change, but just a thought and a suggestion I've made before. Plus allows you to ignore a specific anon (not saying I would do that to you anon's here in this thread).

anonymous says

And yes, I've personally gone through this process a number of times (dollar amounts of damages were about $12k per claim) and each of the occasions required that I coherently PROVED my claim to the consultants and representatives who were assigned to investigate. It takes MONTHS to go through. No lawyers were even necessary on my end. I got most of the money back.

My BS meter just pegged off the scale. Go ahead, tell us for what, where, and against who.

Anon said "when sometimes that shit goes south there's a channel for owners to deal with it"

Well of course there is. Given the various levels of back-and-forth plus the dollar amount you were talking about of course arbitration is the perfect forum. No one with knowledge of the subject matter would say otherwise.

What we are talking about here is frankly a universe away from that. In many cases 2K is high and sometimes it's only say $350 or less. Or sometimes you are looking at injunctive actions or damages that are not yet known (i.e. the experian data breach). Either way, the aggrieved certainly has skin in the game but really no one to speak for them, plus doing it themselves may cost more ( hours away from their job. ) then the recovery.

And it is precisely for this reason that class actions are permitted. And when they were enacted everyone expected some of the bad actors to be shamed into negotiation via the airing of their dirty laundry. In other words, the occasional news blurb you see where some blood sucking ambulance chaser was crying about "the children" and corporate counsel was "admitting no wrongdoing" is exactly the kabuki theater and mechanism that was expected to bring relief.

Ah yes - "no one to speak for them" except the righteous ultra-for-profit attorneys who will redistribute evil wall street's coffers to the little people (but keep a lot of it for themselves compared to the "victims").

And are they really "victims" if they can't read their contracts before signing for the money?

"Self righteous attorneys"

Yep and the best hired guns will not only take down Wall st One day, then zealously defend it from " frivolous lawsuits " The next. In many ways it is the most sincere expression of free-market economics that man has ever created.

"Are they really victims if they do not read the contract?"

Yes, because even if they understand the terms perfectly no one is expected to understand the economics of class action suits. The careful person will read binding arbitration and think they are OK, but that's only because they don't have an attorney sitting over there shoulder explaining how they are being screwed by the economics of litigation.

anonymous says

I don't care what you believe, Bullshit Bobby.

I knew it was cic making shit up again. Sure, right you went to arbitration 3 times and got 12k each time. For your next lie you are going to tell us you graduated grade school. .

anonymous says

And are they really "victims" if they can't read their contracts before signing for the money?

You should go live on a naked uninhabited island if you want to know what life would be like without assuming any long microprint contracts from multinational corporations.

No cell phones, no cable, no internet, no entertainment venues, no airlines, no uber, and no technology of any kind as you are required to hold these corporations worth hundreds of billions of dollars harmless for acts of negligence and intentional fraud. The era we live in cannot be condensed into a few dogmatic statements about the free market.

WookieMan says

Patrick - Comments 33-37 are hard to follow who is who. Well, not really. But it would make it a whole hell of a lot easier if they had anonymous_1,3,54,520 etc. at the end of anonymous or something along those lines. I know it essentially doesn't make you fully anonymous anymore in a sense. But outside of anyone that has been doxxed or doxxed themselves, we're all pretty much anonymous here. So I don't see who it would be hurting. I know IP addresses will change, but just a thought and a suggestion I've made before. Plus allows you to ignore a specific anon (not saying I would do that to you anon's here in this thread).

Yes, I'll make anon users distinct. Hopefully this weekend.

PCGyver says