The laser eye surgery industry does fraud.
Kinda related to lasik:
My brother who was around 18 at the time wanted to do lasik surgery. Its usually recommended to do it later. I just thought it was weird that he got approval for the surgery and the go ahead and everything until about one to two weeks before the surgery (he got approval months in advance).
It took until near surgery for someone to catch the fact he is so young and dissuade him against the surgery. They very heavily dissuaded him too. It went from everything ok to you really really shouldnât do this at all. Weird.
My first guess about what happened: Most people are yes-men who avoid conflicts and donât bring up problems (sometimes they donât learn whatâs a problem; sometimes they know but keep their mouth shut). Many executives and middle managers incentivize yes-man behavior even from workers whoâd rather not do it. Then at some point in the process you got lucky and someone willing to say ânoâ saw what was happening and was horrified.
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I had no idea about these major risks with lasik. It surely wasnât anything I was told prior to getting my lasik surgery some 10 years ago. Fortunately everything went well for me and I havenât had any issues. But all I heard prior to the surgery was that it was safe and didnât really have any side effects - which apparently isnât true.
That makes sense.
I think I ran into a yes-man type a few months back.
Our house is kind of a mess, so me and my brother decided to start cleaning it up. We decided to hire a service to deep clean. One of the services we called asked a bunch of questions about the state of our house. One question was, âDo you have cockroaches?â We said, âYes, not an insane amount, but still quite a few.â We didnât think much of it. So after finishing up everything over the phone, they said we were all good to go. I go to sign the contract online and it said something in there about how cockroaches could not be in the house at all. Seeing even a single one meant they had the right to cancel and keep the money. Seeing how the phone call went well I didnât take it seriously. Maybe it was just a regulation that they ignore, I donât know. So I signed it and everything. ~2-3 days later someone calls and asks if I have cockroaches. I was like, âyesâ. They said âsorry we canât do service on a house with cockroaches. We would come, leave, and keep your money. So Iâll do you a favor and cancel it.â
So yeah I guess someone in the chain caught how I said I have cockroaches and helped me not screwed over.
Roblox: Inflated Key Metrics For Wall Street And A Pedophile Hellscape For Kids
Article from short-seller firm accuses Roblox of multiple things including facilitating sex crimes and fraud: lying about how many users they have and how much time the users spend on Roblox. (These are large lies to influence billions of investor dollars.)
What percentage of companies valued at over a billion dollars are doing some sort of significant, important, serious fraud? Serious question for you to think over. If you are interested in topics like capitalism or politics, I think you should try to form an actual numeric opinion about this. If the answer is 20% or 80%, those are very different and it makes a big difference to what economic policies to advocate today. Here Iâll make a poll; please do it.
What percentage of billion dollar or larger companies do you think do serious fraud?
- 0-10%
- 11-33%
- 34-66%
- 67-89%
- 90-100%
0
voters
Something I just thought of: how much of this is also related to just how businesses are taught to conduct themselves. I think to some people when talking about these issues of fraud people think of bad people doing bad things intentionally. Their is plenty of that, sure. But I think some of the stuff business are taught to do âlegitimatelyâ are bad. A lot of how advertising is done is fraudulent, but I donât know if that reaches levels of âsignificant, important, serious fraudâ in many cases.
Hereâs an example of where I think a company isnât necessarily trying to be bad. From the Roblox article mentioned above:
- Interviews reveal Roblox effectively has two sets of books for counting users: one for internal business decisions, in which multiple accounts are âde-altedâ, and one used by the finance team that reports higher metrics to investors.
Now the article does mention a lot of bad things about Roblox and its 100% possible they are doing this in a bad way, but when I read that point in the article it reminded of sayings Iâve seen in various forms of media. The sayings Iâm referring to are when businessmen are told to lie in order to get a profit. I donât know if thats the best way to put it. Mmm. I canât easily find something to reference right now, but I remember this one court-room scene in a movie/tv-show where the lawyers were selecting jurors and the attorneys say something along the lines of, âBusinessmen as jurors will buy into a story of nothing to something. Where you have to lie to investors to get the money you need.â The moral of that kind of thing being that you have to lie to investors to get the stuff you need. The way its said doesnât seem to have the intention of lying to investors to fraudulently get money and keep doing that. The way its said seems to be more akin to a means justify the ends kind of thing. The world requires lying to investors, now we donât want to keep doing that and be a bad businessman. Thatâs just the way the world works.
Another version is âFake it 'till you make it.â (which is for misleading both investors and customers â and I think also your own employees).
The talent can, and sometimes does, leave companies. This is relevant to evaluating the decisions of executives who e.g. cause it. Itâs also a little connected to the Atlas Shrugged plot of the men of the mind going on strike and refusing to work for bad companies.
I understand the economic principles involved here and I like Mises. But we donât have a free market. The comment section is just like âyeah youâre right and most people are dumbâ (itâs r/austrian_economics). But how might our society not being a free market be relevant to price gouging related to hurricanes? Serious question that people may want to consider.
Also, as a side note, the OP says in comments:
I got banned in /unpopularopinion for stating the exact same thing. Apparently this take is so unpopular that I broke the rules.
I do sympathize with him on that point and think that sort of censorship is harmful and irrational.
One thing off the top of my head:
Preface: I have very limited knowledge of economics outside of capitalism good, control bad, and some random economic talking points shared by pundits.
However, one thing comes to mind here is that since we donât have a free market things suck.The economy sucks for a lot of people because of issues with control and stuff. While price gouging (from my limited understanding) is good more-or-less in theory, I think part of the issue here is that many people arenât really interacting with the economy properly, if that makes sense. While price gouging is economically and theoretically correct, all our stuff with supply and demand and all that is messed up by government anyway.
Anyways what came to mind here was that since we donât have a free-market anyway, maybe allowing price-gouging wouldnât be good. Some people who also need stuff literally canât get it due to the state of the economy. Its kind of better to ration it out or something?
Also if price-gouging was allowed in our current economy I can totally see companies doing it in a fraudulent manner
https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/1g6ufbe/just_got_incredibly_low_balled/
When I was a manager I was in a similar situation. I wanted to offer a contractor the same in salary they were getting as a cut from the agency. My boss pushed back by saying, âyou need to advocate for the company more.â Basically trying to low-ball them was me doing my duty to the company.
I told him I wouldnât do that because I believed it was in the companyâs best interest to both pay an industry rate and act kindly towards this person who had done right by us constantly.
Come performance review time I got docked for ânot considering business interests sufficiently in their decision making.â I was denied a promotion and then let go.
You have to realize that capitalism is an ideology and plenty of people adopt gladly because it benefits their relationship with the hand that feeds them.
Panera product advertisement:
Product served:
Customer adds: âPlus the avocado wasnât ripeâ
Fraud?
PS Iâm also skeptical of the âLow Carbon Certifiedâ part.
I think its fraud. Corporations have recipes and stuff for managers/employees to follow, so if the product served picture more or less follows corporate standards I think thats fraudulent.
I do think that a lot of advertising where the pictures looks significantly different from the actual product is fraudulent. I donât know what to make of products that donât look as good/similar to the picture product but arenât that crazy different. I think McDonalds is an ok example of this? Though I could be biased to them cause Iâve eating there pretty much my whole life (since four) on a consistent basis. Their actual food does not look wildly different from their advertising pictures to me. Maybe its still fraudulent regardless? Hmm. Thinking about it some more I think the societal accepted standard for this kind of thing is that the actual product has to look reasonably close to the idealized ad image. That doesnât mean its not fraudulent though. Its just an accepted form of fraud.
As i writing this I also thought about bad workers and stuff. The product served picture could be a result of a chain of lazy/bad/overworked workers who just pushed through that mess to get stuff out the door (maybe they ordered at a busy part of the day). I think if corporate or a manager encourages this kind of thing its fraud. I donât know how to categorize a worker who doesnât care.
Lets say you have a worker who doesnât care (for good or bad, the reason isnât too important I think) and half-asses the food. Is the company fraudulent here? Maybe? If they failed to do some stuff like quality checking, then yeah. It seems like the above was a delivery order in a clear container so whoever was packing that couldâve seen that it (maybe) didnât meet standards or maybe it was the same dude.
While its not the same, in my head I picture a small business ran by a decent person who leaves his shop for, lets say, a day to go on a vacation. The kind of workers he hired are the kind that have to be always supervised. He comes back the next day to bad things like food being made incorrectly. Is he at fault? I guess, since he knew the workers probably would do something like this and because its his business.
Oh I think I found a way to put what Iâm trying to get at: is a restaurant making a mistake on your fraudulent? I think its bad, but I donât know if I would call it fraud.
That they meet it or of the certification itself? I know companies have been caught lying to get verified for stuff like that and Iâve also heard that the verification criteria for these kinds of things can be pretty bad.
Imagine, instead of a company, an individual did all that then said those defenses. What would you think of that person? Would that remove some excuses you may have made for the company?
Hereâs the legal thingy (donât know the term) from the court talking about denying its motion:
I just skimmed through and tried to find other arguments from Lindt that maybe I would like. Nothing too persuasive but I didnât give too much of a detailed read. Reason I did this is because I think the video above is a little dishonest when they say â⊠so you know how a company thinksâ. I donât disagree that companies have some pretty bad views, but from my limited legal knowledge its typical for a company or an individual to argue just about anything. Iâm sure those three arguments she shared are typical of how a company (and Lindt) thinks, but I think anyone would have such arguments. The goal of lawyers is to get a case dismissed for there client. Occasionally the client may not want some types of arguments because it may make them look bad. There are other clients who donât care and just want the case gone.
To answer your question: I wouldnât necessarily think less of a person for making those kinds of arguments, in a sense. Going off of what I wrote above, sometimes youâll have a bunch of arguments. I donât really have a strong opinion on how you fight your legal cases. I overall donât have much of a high opinion of our courts/legal system. I would try and look at all the defenses someone brought up and see if they have some reasonable ones. I think Lindt may? probably not.
Hmm. I was just focusing on a company/individual defending itself. Is the fact that an individual actually (allegedly) do all the stuff important here? idk.
Youâre speaking fairly generally. I think analyzing some specifics might help. E.g. from your link their marketing said:
[e]xpertly crafted with the finest ingredients
which they call âpufferyâ:
exaggerated advertising, blustering, and boasting upon which no reasonable buyer would rely
Imagine something similar in other contexts.
A man says to his wife: âobviously when I said Iâd never cheat on you that was puffery. no reasonable woman would have believed me. I didnât break any promise; you were unreasonable to ever think I meant it.â Would you want to stay married to that man?
Imagine a friend says: âSure I said I would be a good, trustworthy friend. But everyone says that. Itâs just standard, meaningless bluster, as all reasonable people know.â Would you want to stay friends with that person?
In other contexts Iâd think these kinds of arguments are bad. Seems like they cited some court cases and stuff related to puffery. This, to me, implies that they found a legal defense somewhere and are using it. Now Iâm not defending them entirely. They could truly think like that. However, in a legal context people tend to just find an argument to get themselves out of trouble. Iâm not saying thats ok per se, but I think itâd be different from the other contexts you shared. Thats why I mentioned that if I were to judge a company in a legal context, I would look at a total of their defenses. Maybe they have some defenses that I think are more reasonable and fine.
No. I agree thats bad. When you say something about the kind of person you are and then act against thats bad.
No.
Also I think the examples you gave are reasonable/normal statements that can be normally communicated. I agree calling those puffery would be bad. I feel like puffery, to me, would be very exaggerated stuff like âour chocolate was made with the milk of the godsâ, not â[e]xpertly crafted with the finest ingredientsâ. I do think Lindt calling that puffery is bad.
Hmm. Iâm also partial to thinking actual puffery is bad. Not everyone finds the same things ridiculous, or evaluates exaggeration the same. I think puffery is fraudulent.
The issue, to me, isnât that they called it âpufferyâ. Itâs that they were denying they meant what they said in their marketing. They are like âwe didnât really lie; you (customers) were just unreasonably stupid for ever thinking we would have been telling the truthâ. So you canât ever trust anything in their marketing; theyâre saying they arenât even trying to make it true.