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?
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.
Yes, IMO when there is more competition, politicians start caring about the little things besides the big things like inflation.
I agree with one correction.
Vote even in non swing states.
There are far too many registered voters who don’t vote.
Texas could be blue every year if half the dem no shows just voted.
Also even less vote outside of the presidential election.
And yet, one party keeps enacting consumer and worker protection laws, with the other party taking them away. HMMM CURIOUS oh well I’m sure they’re both equally bad
Yeah, Democrats are way better at making legislation that benefits an average person. They’re also respect the parliamentary conventions and the democratic process.