this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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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.
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
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
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