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?
Boozilla@lemmy.world 3 months ago
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.
stoly@lemmy.world 3 months ago
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.
murmelade@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
AndrewZabar@lemmy.world 3 months ago
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.
rimmedalpha@lemmynsfw.com 3 months ago
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.
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 3 months ago
One big union? For all the industrial workers in the world? I wonder if anyone has thought of that before.
tabarnaski@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
In a democracy, that’s called a government.
lone_faerie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
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.
Boozilla@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I have had this same thought many times! Vote with our wallets en masse. It’s kind of almost happening to fast food.
trolololol@lemmy.world 3 months ago
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.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Thanks for starting your argument with this, so I know I can ignore the rest.
Boozilla@lemmy.world 3 months ago
So you don’t understand basic American history or what the word ignore means. Got it.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
basically capitalism