People want stuff and want to accomplish more than they have time to do on their own.

I have no idea why you want to twist that into dark desires and laziness.

There are entire departments at large corporations that do nothing but think of ways to sneak in more fees and higher costs. Its endemic throughout corporate Americas largest industries.

Insurance Banking Finance Media Energy Software

All are infused with opaque business practices and layers of legal protections hiding behind 1000 page contracts.

That's absolutely true.

And it's also true that most Americans don't work at large corporations and that most companies are not large.

https://www.bls.gov/charts/county-employment-and-wages/estab...

Shrinkflation is one very clear example of this in action.

Is selling a candy bar that is half the size of the packaging yet the same cost as it was before they shrank the product fraud or is it just business?

It fits the definition of fraud more than anything...misrepresenting the outcome by hiding the facts. Seems pretty fraudulent to me...

No argument here.

But most Americans don't work at large corporations and that most companies are not large.

https://www.bls.gov/charts/county-employment-and-wages/estab...

The parent post said that most businesses are fraudulent and pointed at practices by large businesses.

I think it depends on what you consider a weakness of human nature. We're susceptible to sugary foods, even though they're bad for us: are bakeries frauds? If we suddenly stopped feeling emotions tomorrow - if we all started acting totally rationally, how many industries would fall apart, even though we're theoretically way more efficient?

The same goes for our need for convenience and luxury. We could have all survived on brick phones or Blackberries, but we now employ so much of our population making slightly-more-luxurious iPhones. At some point, these impediments are what cause us to grow.

Yes, and it is so much worse. We have very few actual choices for major services and are forced into business with them because life without these services is next to impossible.

Think about the tax code as an example. We literally have to buy software or pay a professional to decipher the madness. It's by design in order to keep all these people and companies profitable!

Or shrinkflation. Is selling a candy bar that is half the size of the packaging yet the same cost as it was before they shrank the product fraud or is it just smart business?

It fits the definition of fraud more than anything...

Ok I just stopped and thought about it, and concluded that this is BS.

I'm glad that all these businesses exist, so that I can specialize in a particular kind of work, and they can specialize in doing things I don't do, and then I can transact with them using a standard medium of exchange to trade my special skills for theirs.

None of that has anything to do with "the weaknesses of human nature" or laziness, or false urgency, or an impeded ability to distinguish value, cost, and need. It's just a trade of my time for theirs, on terms I find acceptable.

There is nothing fraudulent about any of this. The coffee shop I bought my coffee from this morning and the restaurant I bought my lunch from this afternoon did not fool me, I just enjoyed drinking the coffee and eating the food they prepared, and considered their prices fair. No semantic legalities or double speak or meaningless words required, I just wanted some goods and services, and was happy to purchase them.

That's honest, not thievery.

You honestly feel this way about your bank, your cell provider, your health insurance company, your insurance company? When you read your bills, and see countless arbitrary fees, do you feel as if you're in a personal relationship with the service and in control?

The small shop owner or tradesmen, sure. The giant corp with no human connection and nothing but a walled presence? No way.

Yes, all of those businesses provide me useful services. Do I have my criticisms of all of them? YES. Does that mean they are scams that rely on human weaknesses to thrive? No, that would be a very naive and, frankly, silly conclusion to draw.

This isn't boolean math, there's a whole continuum between "everything is perfect" and "everything is a corrupt scam".

Someone is naive, that's a fact...

Good luck negotiating or even communicating with ATT or American Airlines or any major provider of services you think you buy... Let alone your hospital bill, your car insurance, your health insurance or your taxes... The list goes on and on and on. We're what they call "Captive customers". You literally have no choice.

It's actually astounding that you support this stuff let alone respect it. However, in a world where people put tattoos of Tesla on their bodies, it makes sense.

Once again, you are describing things that are very bad and annoying and which I desperately want to see improved, but you are not describing things that are scams or fraudulent.

It would certainly be a scam if I were convinced to pay AT&T or American Airlines, and then they didn't actually build any cell towers or fly any airplanes. But that's clearly not the case! Absolutely yes, complain about poor business practices and bad provision of service, that's an important back-pressure mechanism. And yeah, it is naive to be all dewy-eyed and worshipful of a business and its leaders (like I see way too many people being with Musk, and have seen with other companies and people at other points in the past).

But your view that these businesses do nothing useful is just as inaccurate as the view of those blind worshippers. What you want to do when evaluating stuff in the world, is to draw conclusions as accurately as possible. Setting out two buckets for "good" and "bad" and tossing everything you see into one of the two of them is only going to lead you to having a distorted inaccurate view of everything.

Insurance can be a scam, when you pay premiums while the provisions for payout are so thin as to never be triggered. But it's pretty hard to run an insurance scheme that never pays and just fully pockets the premiums, without being prosecuted.

And health insurance in particular is further from a scam than most, because a huge amount of money is paid out for medical care on a constant basis, and a large portion of that is paid by health insurance companies. It can certainly be a bad deal for individual healthy people, but in aggregate, it is certainly not a scam.

What "stuff" is it astounding that I support? You want me to, what, think that it's bad that phone companies provide cell service and airlines fly planes? I don't. I think it's good that they do those things. That doesn't mean that I think everything about their business practices is good. These are not conflicting thoughts, in any way.

> every business is a scam of sorts that relies upon the weaknesses of human nature to thrive

Yes, the next time you go to buy a computer or mobile phone you should just skip it because it's a scam. Just manufacture and assemble the hardware yourself and create the operating system/ecosystem of apps while you're at it. It just pure laziness not too. Or maybe consider that capitalism and the division of labor benefits you massively.

I'm not convinced that "laziness" is a weakness of human nature. Businesses are ultimately a way to specialize production without central planning. Allocating some people to bake all the bread in a factory frees up other people who would otherwise have to spend an hour or two every day baking bread. Or from a market perspective, you're willing to pay a premium for not having to put in the labour. Businesses certainly can be exploitative, but I don't think all or even most of them are by nature.