this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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Not to victim blame too much, but when you're starting your own business, you should probably stop just signing stuff you haven't read and relying solely on consumer protection.
As a small business owner, I know the feeling, and I absolutely think this shit should be illegal. But on the other hand, as a business owner, you DO have a responsibility, and unlike random consumers, there's an expectation you have some ability to read and comprehend your contracts. You make the choice to be a business owner, you don't freely chose to be a consumer, and that's a very good reason why consumers need more protection.
The main quote of the article is "We took on a loan that we knew nothing about, basically". That is 100% your own fault, and while the lender is absolute scum, at least a small fraction of the blame lies on the people who don't understand what they, as a business, are agreeing to.
And you're repeating as well. If we'd expect the victim to read this I'd be with you - this audience here seems a different one though: and if the harsh tone of (edit) thread OP encourages even one founder to read one more contract than that's a good thing.
Perhaps the statement should be stronger worded as: look at this small business owner and learn! She paid for your education!
Simply saying "don't talk about what could've been done different" perpetuates not the stigma but the abuser instead.
To be clear: this isn't my headline, I don't change headlines unless it's overly clickbaity or unclear. It's the headline the ABC initially wrote (so shows up when browsing the headlines in their app), and is also the suggested title Lemmy/third party apps offer to auto fill after the link is submitted
I apologize for not being clear, Baku. I referred to the thread OP, not the post itself!
Oh righto, no worries!
Well you seem to know more about why people do what they do than I do. But as "everyone" knows I simply must be behind.
Are you aware that I am not the thread starter? You're talking with two different people.
I appeal to your intelligence: please consider that any action has more than one aspect, more than black and white.
Your assumption concerning my intention for example is straight wrong - as I stated in my very first reply. Where I also agreed with you. I didn't write to be "right" or "wrong", I interact to get new experiences. As I'm only getting shut down as "wrong" I will stop trying that here (that's my perception about your intention. I could be wrong).
I apologize for wasting your time and won't interact further.
Hahahaha
No, the problem is people not reading the contracts they sign.
You're asking for idealism, assuming that we can prevent scumbags - that's not possible, and simply leads people to naively signing anything, and ending up like this story.
Trust, but verify.
Do you think contract lawyers exist solely to create docs? Or maybe to take the time to ensure contracts their clients sign achieve the intent of their clients?
Yes, scummy lender does scummy things, but it was right there in the contract - no one held a gun to her head to sign it. She voluntarily signed it without understanding it.
But maybe she thought she understood it
But it's NOT similar to phising. That's my whole point. A random consumer shouldn't be expected to grasp the fine details, they didn't volunteer to exist in a society and should be protected against threats they don't understand, like phising, predatory loans, etc.
But for a company, it's different. They literally DID sign up for this, and should be expected to grasp the details. You voluntarily take on this responsibility when you start a company, very much unlike some random person getting scammed.
Like other peope, if you start a business: Reader beware
No, we are not talking about people at all. We are talking about companies. Again, if we were talking about people, I would agree with you 100%, but we're not. This is one company making a contract with a different company. Companies are legally distinct from people for very good reasons, and this is one of them.
Of course, there are reallife human behind those companies. And if those people had made these choices as individual people, they would in fact be protected under the law. But they chose NOT to be protected under those laws so they could operate as a company with the ups and down that entails. They voluntarily took this risk to get the benefits of running a company, and now they are crying that they didn't know any better. It doesn't work like that, if you don't want to be treated as a company, don't be one. You don't get to have all the advantages on one hand, and none of the disadvantages on the other.
I want to re-emphasize this: You can absolutely do this work as a private individual. Mia Li, the window-frame importor from the article could have done all her business as a private individual, but she obviously didn't, probably because that comes with some big downsides in taxes. She voluntarily started a company, chosing the waive the very protections she had as a private person, in order to get benefits in the form of tax advantages and other things. And now that she suffers the downsides from her own choises (that choice of starting a business, that she made well before covid), she's upset that she's not shielded from the consequences of her actions like a regular consumer would be.
I don't feel sorry for people when they their voluntary, intentionally risky, actions have consequences. When you chose to forego risk-mitigation in order to recieve financial benefits, you're making a choice. If that goes wrong, you literally only have yourself to blame.
Cool, but wouldn’t it be better if scummy practices weren’t allowed at all? That’s the society I’d rather live in, not the one where we rag on people for being “stupid”. Company or not, there’s simply not enough general education on running a business and I feel that this is really a barrier for those who want to run a business and live the capitalist dream. i.e. she could probably have operated as an individual, but maybe didn’t know any better or maybe she can’t because of some other arrangements. I think it’s hard to say they should know when they might not have the money or access to education, though I haven’t read the article myself so who knows, but I’m just considering the general case here.
Good luck preventing all scummy practices.
Not that we shouldn't try, but to expect them to not exist is naive.
I'm sure we could have legislation made about contracts which are human readable, no "fine print", not obtusely long using legal jargon
If you assume incompetence as the default, as with most consumer protection, then it becomes basically impossible to deal business to business. Can a company lie to a consumer, and then claim they simply don't know or didn't understand? If your industry has a higher profit margin than mine, can I sue you for being scummy?
The basis of consumer protection is that consumer can't be expected to be experts in everything. The basis of business law is that businesses know what they're doing in their field. If you don't, you're doing it wrong.
Now you're just being silly
Would you prefer to argue the semantics, or the actual point?
Someone intentionally, knowingly, drops their legal projections to increase their personal benefit. They stop acting as an individual legally, and start acting as a company. And then the consequences of that action happen.
If you can't be honest, at least don't lie
I think this is the full quote the most important part being:
They're not lying, you're either being disingenuous or an idiot
This is nothing like phishing. You are just grasping at straws.