I’m just a regular person making about $70K a year in a big city, and I’ve recently felt incredibly powerless dealing with private companies. For instance, my landlord’s auto-pay system had a glitch that excluded my pet rent and water bill. I ended up with over $1,000 in late fees. Despite hours on the phone, it turns out their system doesn’t really do auto-pay and requires a fixed amount instead of covering the full rent. It feels like a scam, and my options are to pay the fees or potentially spend a fortune on legal action.
Another frustrating experience was trying to cancel my pest control service. I had to endure a 40-minute call followed by 35 minutes of arguing, just to finally cancel. There’s no online cancellation option, and the process felt like a timeshare sales pitch.
Why do ordinary people seem so unprotected against these shady practices, and how can we change this? How does one person even start to address these issues?
To make major, sustained, positive change would require widespread violent revolution.
It’s the only thing we will have left pretty soon. Capitalism is pretty close to flatlining. Then we will have a Corporate Congress and the nation will become The United Corporation of America - in name as opposed to now where that’s what it is but it’s not yet called that.
I do anticipate fascism becoming overt after November, but the powers that be will market it well, like that time they turned Nazism into ‘White Nationalism’.
We already have corporate Congress.
Reactionary and minimal lawmaking. A cultural thing since wild west times, because of freedom-mindset. Lead to more and more influence of financial strong parties, lead to laws supporting said parties.
I’m not an expert in any of those areas and from europe, but that’s how i understand the USA.
In a word. Lobbyists.
It turns out if you throw enough money at people then you can make them do anything you want.
Yep. Welcome to the hell that is corporate capitalism.
I’d argue it’s because citizens have no voice. The media has there corporate narrative, but the public interest has very few organizations in advocacy of it.
Support local journalism (financially), work to break any media control on the narrative.
The first thing people could start doing is stop providing free labor to the media. It’s all over Lemmy.
Don’t link to a corporate news outlet. Link to an .edu or PBS or NPR or a quality international publicly funded news organization. Or better yet build your own narrative, your own opinions. Discuss your opinions respectfully on !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world . Build momentum and take away the corporate medias control.
Without a public voice advocating for the people, it will be very hard to change any legislation in the peoples favor.
Let me guess, red state?
revolution i hear you say?
Buy guns; hunt the rich
I always thought it was ironic that the country with widespread gun ownership under the pretext of protecting individual freedoms has a surprising lack of individual freedoms
Close, I said ‘bloody revolution’ but your response is more marketable.
Why: Because we are, and always have been, an oligarchy
How to fix: Bloody revolution, that’s about it.
The owner class never give up their power willingly, and we can’t afford to bribe the politicians enough to force them to.
How to fix: Bloody revolution, that’s about it.
I disagree with this. It’ll take some revolution, but can be avoided bloody.
On revolution I do say vote. The 2022 election was a turnout of 52% of the voting age population. Just barely over half, and that’s the second highest turnout to a nonpresidential election year since 2000. All the oxygen always goes to the Presidency but what OP is dealing with comes up in local elections, and the local and state shit deals far more with your day to day than the national. Hell, when national laws even come up, weed is still schedule 1 “more dangerous than cocaine” to the federal government but just about every state has legalized it.
It’s not a quick solution, and it’s not as simple anymore as “go out and vote” but gotta kick everyone up who hasn’t given a shit (if they’re not voting, think they’ll back you in a revolution?). It’s a fucking slow ass slog that takes daily fighting, like I’ve got a group that I’m the one who posts the ballots, the dates, the links, honestly do everything but bang on their doors and drag them to the polls but it’s a little bit that helps. As I saw “A vote is not a valentine. You’re not professing your love for the candidate. It’s a chess move for the world you want to live in.”
The Republicans have been doing that for years, they’ve never let a single dem run even for superintendent across the country uncontested. They worked slow and methodically to get the supreme court. Their revolution can be argued to have started as far back as Nixon. We’re arguably at their end game, but it seems like they’ve overreached this time, it’s time to start clawing back territory.
The reason though I’m against a bloody revolution is, yes it’s useful as a last resort, but it honestly is at that in the chess analogy above picking up the table, throwing it in the room and starting a riot. You hope you come out okay but at that point it’s really up in the air who comes out on top. Guillotines come up a lot, and France is doing pretty well right now. But remember between modern France and the guillotines was a messy time post revolution that was stabilized by someone who declared himself Emperor and attempted to conquer all of Europe.
If we get a jan6 2.0, that is literally the last resort.
I’m hoping no human ever kills or dies for a political ideology but I am not that naive to think that blood won’t be spilled.
It already has, boogaloo boys and streaming church shooters.
And let us not forget there has never once been a successful capitulation with fascists, ever.
OP I don’t know what state you’re in but in some states like CA a landlord can’t pull shit like this
in California, a landlord cannot compel a tenant to pay rent via electronic transfer. The landlord must provide an alternate means by which the tenant can make payment. See California Civil Code Section 1947.3(a)(1)).
We’re peasants and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Personally I’d recommend focusing your time and energy on the things you can control. As an individual, there is nothing you can do alone about it. If you feel strongly enough about it you could join or start an advocacy organization about the part of the problem you find most galling. But the truth is unless enough people both want change and are motivated to take action to get it the world will continue its decline unchecked.
Volunteer if you can, but try not to let it get to you. The impersonal brutality of our world sucks butts. Some horny french guy would tell you that life is absurd. If everyone agreed we shouldn’t burn fossil fuels, we wouldn’t. But we can’t ever all agree about anything. Most landlords aren’t malicious, they just don’t understand how their greed affects others and don’t care enough to try. The horny french guy’s drinking buddy and metamore would say you can only laugh at the absurdity of existing at all. If you look hard enough the entire universe seems in on how fucked we all. Do what you can, but find something else that makes it bother you less (like a hobby, not a meth habit). I like writing weird stuff and being the model maliciously compliant tenant.
You totally have a move with the landlord. Follow the rules of your lease chapter and verse. I bet there is a specific clause in there about you being responsible for any unreported maintenance issues. And there is also a clause saying something about the landlord’s responsibility to perform maintenance. There is usually some wiggle room, but there is probably like a two week window in which the landlord is required to fix any issues with their building.
Report everything. Get on a first name basis with the maintenance folks and whoever answers the phone for your landlord. I had a roach problem because my next door neighbor was a hoarder and left my landlord voicemails every night updating them on all the new locations I have found roaches and my efforts to eradicate them myself. Once the roaches were dealt with my landlord was very willing to overlook those maintenance fees because it’s cheaper than court.
Edit: and was probably grateful not to deal with that tenant.
What if OP went to law school and became a lawyer? Then runs for office and becomes a legislator? Maybe a judge?
One person can change a lot. That’s what the phrase means, “we the people.” There’s nobody else coming to help us govern, just people.
Good question and good examples. With things like forced arbitration in user agreements I’d love to know more on how to turn things around on this.
I spoke to a lawyer about something similar to this recently and he basically just laughed at me. Told me there is no way it’s worth it, would cost tens of thousands of dollars to fight it in court and would basically have no gain to me personally at all. Overturning such a small amount no matter how wrong or immoral it is would be extremely costly on both sides but they have way more money to throw at the issue than I do which I totally agree with honestly. So you can do something that’s totally immoral, just as long as you have tons of money behind you to pay for it
And this right here is one of the fundamental injustices of the American legal system. It’s completely fucked that some conglomerate can basically railroad an individual into poverty from a bullshit lawsuit and that private individuals without deep pockets essentially have zero recourse in the legal arena.
it’s because money equals power and they have all the money and are able to build mechanisms to suck the money you have so that they have even more money. Can’t help with the landlord but for the pest control using something like virtual credit cards numbers. so if they won’t let you cancel. you just delete that card and they lose acess to your payment details. when they contact you for payment just cancel right then.
Capitalism. The answer for most societal problems we face.
The country was founded by slave owners. After that we had various “industry barons” like railroads, petroleum, automobiles, etc. Now we have multinational corporations (with larger budgets and more power than several countries) calling the shots in congress. It’s always been like this. Post-WWII provided a brief respite, but that limited run of the “American Dream” was temporary and no longer exists.
Part of the solution would be: worker cooperatives. We need a lot more of those. It won’t solve everything, but it’s a really good start.
The country was founded by slave owners.
Thanks for starting your argument with this, so I know I can ignore the rest.
So you don’t understand basic American history or what the word ignore means. Got it.
See also: blaming “capitalism” for literally everything
Ill add a worker cooperative might be even better than a union because a union can easily be corrupt
Any group of people can become corrupt if it is filled with corrupt people.
We need a kind of everybody union.
I had this conversation with lots of people if everyone saw a company is doing things or taking advantage of people imagine if on the exact same day, one million customers canceled their accounts. That kind of unity can give all the power needed to the regular people. But you can’t get people to cooperate or even to have enough self-discipline to go along with something that isn’t for their immediate and measurable benefit. And so the big players know they can abuse and exploit.
Isn’t that ideally what the government is supposed to be? We can’t all individually fight for ourselves, so we vote for people to represent us and work to protect our interests. That is, if politicians actual represented their constituents and not the highest bidder.
Well yes except our government is bought and owned by those corporations. That’s why we are not represented by them.
There’s a simple way to put it, but it’s painful to hear: the bad guys won.
We need a kind of everybody union.
In a democracy, that’s called a government.
U.S.A. is not a democracy, it’s an oligarchy. Has been for decades, but more so now than ever before. Corporations have begun to openly ignore law and have no fear of punishment. Because they own the government they write the laws and they decide what happens everywhere.
As I said in a different comment, it’s a painful thing to hear, but the sad simple truth is, the bad guys won.
A more perfect union, that can establish justice and domestic tranquility. One that provides for the common defense, promotes the general welfare, and secures the blessing of liberty for ourselves and future generations.
Dang, if only we had written that down and made it legally enforceable
In Australia ACCC takes care of abusive businesses, surely there must be something like that? Even 3rd world countries like Brazil has something like it.
Nope. America is OWNED by rich people. It’s a corporation and they make the laws so all the laws are to help them have more power.
I wouldn’t see it so black-and-white. I don’t think Tim Walz is owned by anyone and he is running for VP.
He’s beholden to the corporations controlled by the wealthiest 1%. Anyone who gets elected is already someone who “plays ball” because they don’t get to there otherwise.
Ha you don’t even get to run without people in line to donate to you. And since corp donates for both candidates it’s a win or win situation for them, which implies lose or lose for everyone.
It would be nice if corporate bribery were not allowed. Giving tens of millions to them - to their “campaign” - which they all funnel and launder into their pockets - is literal and unambiguous bribery. And yet it’s the reality of our nation.
AIPAC owns him.
I haven’t been to Brazil but as far as its politics goes I don’t think it’s that 3rd world
We have the Federal Trade Comission but it needs to have the balls to really protect us.
Even when they step up its usually a small fine the offender just writes off as the cost of doing business.
Corp breaks a law. Makes $100m profit. Gets $10m fine. All good for the books!!
True but Lina Khan’s been doing some great work in changing that agency’s track record.
I have had this same thought many times! Vote with our wallets en masse. It’s kind of almost happening to fast food.
One big union? For all the industrial workers in the world? I wonder if anyone has thought of that before.
Too bad it never works.
basically capitalism
Basically we got all our rights in the post war period. Baby boomers and their parents had an excellent time, got theirs, then pulled up the ladder behind them. Zoomers will probably fix this but it’ll be interesting to see if it sticks this time.
Sounds like what we really need is WW3
Accelerationism isn’t a good look
I’d rather have a New Deal 2
Electric Boogaloo
