No Stupid Questions

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.

Vote. Seriously. Recent history around consumer protection has been very partisan and this is something that impacts us all

One party creates things like

• cfpb
• net neutrality
• ACA
• education assistance

The other party. Cancels, sues, interrupts. Project 2025 probably tries to entirely destroy

I finally was able to cancel a Telus home security service after they tried to put me in a 3 yr contract. I finally was able to cancel. I sent the equipment back and then they started charging me other monthly fees as if I had renewed. I didn't even have their equipment anymore.

another 45 minutes on the phone and they say it is finally cancelled. But who knows. I'll probably have to call again when they take the amount from my bank account despite removing my bank info from their site.

A company with 19.2M users. Imagine how many people are robbed "by mistake." This is not a mistake but part of their internal procedures.

Cancelling a service even when contract is over is made difficult on purpose.

Yeah I am seeing this more and more. You even see it business to business. We need regulation, monopoly busting, and progressive taxation.

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.

When corpotations are allowed to buy out politicians, this is the end result. Corporations have no responsibility, they know they will not be held accountable.

In a word. Lobbyists.

There's a lot of replies here about why US citizens are in the situation they are but not how to fix it, which was the question you asked. You have two political parties in a first past the post system with largely similar corporate focussed policies, people primarily vote against a party rather than for one that represents them. If you really want to change things you'll need to overhaul your voting system to break up your two party system and encourage competition from parties that actually represent what people want.

Unfortunately there is no safe and easy way to do this; it means the two parties in power giving up that power which they will not do willingly. You'll need large scale consistent and actually disruptive protests, ie not just meeting up for a day then returning to life as nornal, but the US has a history of responding to protests the same way they do everything; with violence.

So more practically, you can contact your representative at the appropriate level of government and hope they don't completely ignore you this time.

One of the things more and more companies are doing is

Ignoring the Laws.

They have learned to ignore what they are required to do or what they are allowed to do . Knowing few will sue and those who win will get no more than they were due.

The companies have learned there is no downside for being criminal.... So they have become criminals.

The US is incredibly bad at reining in capitalism. It also only has two parties that are both heavily influenced by lobbyists.

To fix it, not sure, calling politicians and showing up to stuff will help but it's always going to be an uphill battle. Anyway, just vote, if you get the option to choose then vote for a third party as long as you're not in a swing state.

The real solution is still voting reform to get more diverse opinion so if that's on the ballot vote for it and try to get other people to do the same. The UK missed a major opportunity for voter reform.

This can happen over a couple of generations by removing winner take all representatives for a state and cause a hung parliament. Coalition talks will then be more likely to include concessions on the two state systems to get a governing coalition.

You can look at the UK as being the same only one generation ahead if things go well.

Why would regular people need protection? They don't have shareholders! 🤷🏻‍♂️

I swear shit has gotten exponentially worse since I was young. For example, last year I suffered a brain injury, I have about a month of missing memory. During that month, my homeowners association sent notice that they were being sold to another management company and the autopay I'd been using for 5 years would be cancelled. I missed this notice due to being in the hospital with brain damage and so never got new payment switched over.

I'm used to companies being gracious and working with their customers. Instead I had a lawyer sicked on me and the paperwork to forclose my house was started. I wound up having to pay all their legal fees and penalties which was an order of magnitude more than the actuall missed payments.

This was the most painful one recently but this is par for the course. Someone else said it in this thread but it's become a real dog eat dog world, something that used to be a folksy saying has now become a harsh reality.

Why do ordinary people seem so unprotected against these shady practices

Assuming you are in the USA, it's fundamentally because our politics is fueled by private money. The "haves" spend lots of money to make rules that protect and enrich themselves at the expense of the "have nots". The rich get richer, and the rest of us get a larger share of the burden.

The rich then spend more of their money convincing everyone else that some minority group of their fellow "have nots" are to blame and let us fight amongst ourselves. They starve us but leave us with just enough left to lose so that the price of doing something about it is too high (quitting, losing health insurance, getting arrested at a protest, etc) for most of us to bear.

how can we change this?

Get money out of politics. Get the public to stop blaming their fellow have nots and demand change from the haves.

How does one person even start to address these issues?

Have empathy for and help your neighbors if you can, especially when they take the risks required to push for actual change. Talk to people. Organize. Support/start unions or a mutual aid organization. Go to local government meetings and make your voice heard. Run for local office.

Its easy for a small group of wealthy organizations to tilt specific elections or politics in their favor. It's much harder them to do that in 1,000+ small communities across the nation.

That latter issue is actually being worked on, law wise, right now.

Capitalism. The answer for most societal problems we face.

because private companies were never meant to big this big and powerful.

They have so much power because they lobby and control the government, part of the problem is dems being generally unappealing and trying to focus more on less significant social issues rather than doing things like, taking away the rights that big corpos never should've had in the first place.

It's a give and take game, the less regulations you have, the more companies you have and the more capital you have moving through you, the more you have the less regulations you have and the less capital you have moving through you.

Well one big fix would be to make legal services free at point of services and instead make the government responsible for paying the salaries of lawyers.

Call it Justice for All like Medicare for All but more patriotic sounding and litigious.

Kills SLAP suits, and opens the gates for people who had legitimate grievances but were scared of the legal fees and costs to have access to their day in court.

Start organized movements to heavily push for ranked choice voting. If it becomes a national movement then maybe we'll first start seeing it locally, then on a larger scale.

$1000 is likely small claims court. At least where I was, no lawyers are allowed for small claims so the landlord would have to come to deal with it himself or a representative of the payment company.

In a nutshell: average Americans don’t have extra billions of dollars laying around to lobby against corporations writing laws so lawmakers don’t have to be bothered with it

Did you think about it until it happened to you? There's a huge lack of empathy and thought in general (I would argue that, as communities, this increased as social media became more prevalent and in-person third places shrank). Even then, if there is a concerned group, they still have to fight all those other people who are not concerned because they don't think it will affect them or are possibly mildly inconvenienced by it. I think addressing that would help. Also, writing to your elected officials and voting in all elections.

Because we ordinary people do not possess extraordinary funds to buy that protection

I can't tell you. Because the mods won't like it.

But it rhymes with Piolence.

Capitalism.

Most countries have Capitalism but few suffer as badly as post-Regan America (except maybe post-Thatcher UK).

I think going back in time and video gaming Reagan would be a good start

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.

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)).

Businesses have more money than individual citizens. You will get what you want from the U.S. government and local government when we get money out of politics -Full-stop.

There’s been deliberate dismantling of social services.

I was married to a wealthy man. He was controlling and abusive, and had the police remove me from our home. It wasn’t legal, but the police have lost the records of whatever they did that night. I couldn’t get a lawyer to help me, he had access to my bank accounts and emptied them. I reached out to multiple domestic violence agencies - there is no shelter, there are no lawyers, there are maybe one or two therapists if you are lucky. But I’m basically completely helpless.

It's because the American culture of individualism has successfully divided up worker's power that makes standing against wealthy and powerful individuals next to impossible.

I will say this because people in the US don't seem to look out for neighbours that they can't see.

Vote for politicians who will empower the working class and take billionaires and multinational corps down a notch. Don't let culture war distractions take people's eyes off the ruling class intentionally diverting the attention away from them.

Team up with your neighbours... you don't have to start a protest/riot immediately but ask them if they've had a similar issue with the landlord's autopay system. Have barbecues or potluck dinners with them on occasion.

Go to your local city council when an issue you care about comes up. Write to your city council, state rep, house rep and senators about things that concern you. Join local movements or participate in their events to enact change you want to see. United you will be stronger.

I don't know, but companies shouldn't be allowed to merge if you call either of them and the wait time to speak to a person is more than 2 minutes.

Also companies should have customer conceriges, call them and explain your issue and they navigate the company infrastructure, resolve your issue, and report back.