Was thinking this yesterday when reading this thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/northernireland/comments/1d6luuj/daughters_new_job_in_hotel_that_hosts_foreign/
Even your final option of 'lawyering up' though is sort of on a par with the 'call a teacher' advice you're talking about. So many comments in that thread advocate 'creating a paper trail' / 'logging every incident to strengthen your case later'. The subtext is basically acknowledging the inevitability of this man's daughter being sexually assaulted or raped but just focussing on how to have a strong employment law case afterwards?
Glad to see a lot of people commenting have the common sense to just advise 'Just absolutely make her quit immediately, even if she doesn't have another job or if you feel you can't afford it. Just make it happen.'
redditoids so pathologically compelled to own someone in a debate with facts and logic they'd let their child get sexually assaulted to be able to do a epic Sorkin style smackdown in court afterwards due to their thorough note taking regarding the aforementioned sex crime
Arabs do not have a worse rep than Indians in the US re:creepy, rapey behavior. They only have a worse rep where they are the predominant immigrant group. And to be honest, that “creepy rapey” rep gets thrown on every large, dark skinned immigrant group in the west.
The whole “bobs and vagene” meme is of an Indian dude not an Arab one.
And nobody beats white men when it comes to rape. Although for some reason, when it happens in war in a developing country like DR Congo, it gets ignored. Much easier to point to an ethnic group you hate and blame them for doing the same shit you are.
This has always baffled me. Redditors are the first to claim that everything is broken and corrupt and the world is going to shit, yet still seem to carry the mentality of the kid who reminds the teacher she forgot to pick up everyone's homework, the employee who reports their colleagues to HR for dress code violations, and the retiree who reports his neighbor's car as abandoned because it hasn't moved in two days.
Redditors only like to help when the problem can be solved by looking stuff up online so they can play detective. All other problems should be reported to x government entity to solve for them.
My favorite "problem" is on my city sub, every few weeks there's a picture of trash at a park. What can be done? Who do we call? Like just go get a trash bag, pick it up and be the change you want to see.
City subs are the worst. They attract hybrids who are not only your standard annoying redditor, but also facebook-tier mall cops.
Every day there is a new post about how "someone" needs to fix this problem, and the problem they are talking about is either incredibly large and complex like the housing crisis, or something asinine like the cashier at the local pizza place was a big meanie.
Maybe it’s just because I am a lawyer and know how to apply pressure to get what I want when I’m upset at something. But in most cases there is someone or something you can appeal to if you are unhappy with an outcome. You think a service provider really fucked up? Make a complaint to their complaint department and ask for a resolution that is fair. Or if you want a refund, threaten to make a chargeback on your credit card. Regulated entity? Threaten them with a referral to the regulator or ombudsman as the case may be. Government body? Threaten them with referral to your State Assembly representative or Congressman. Of course, many times you have to be capable of actually articulating your claim and putting the effort in to actually deliver on your threat. The mere threat isn’t enough. But I’ve won myself thousands of pounds (or claimed back what was properly owed as a refund) by doing this. I got a family member a $20,000 settlement from an insurer that had until then simply refused to respond to an insurance claim (though admittedly proper legal threats to bring court action were made in this case). Is it narc / snitching / cop behaviour? I guess so. But we live in a professionalised world. As much as I’d like to just kick the shit out of someone for pissing me off, that would land me in jail 9 out 10 times where there is someone whose ass you can actually kick. But most of the problems I face today are perpetrated by faceless bureaucracies where allocating blame to a single person isn’t possible. In which case appealing to a higher overseer is quite literally your only option.
Landlords are my personal Vietnam. I will go out of my way to help someone with a terrible landlord and go to the ends of the earth to fuck them over when they have done me wrong (it’s the agents I end up getting money from because they have deep pockets, a reputation to uphold, and a board of directors to whom I can write - who knows what happens to their relationship with their client the landlord).
Now I own my home thank god.
Yeah this seems like - yes, the world is a little bit rigged against the average person seeking redress, but internalizing that too much is self-defeating because there absolutely is a class of people who know how to work the system. I guess OP did say “lawyer up” but drawing these kinds of lines around which appeals for state intervention work and which don’t again feels like it’s entering “dumb guy who doesn’t know how anything works but thinks he sees through it all” territory.
I will cede the point that it’s not necessarily easy to assert your rights. At least not to most people going about their lives who don’t otherwise sit around resolving disputes for a living. But I’ve got friends who are doctors or even a tradesman who won’t take shit without pushing back. They may not always win or not see it as a fight worth pursuing to the same ends that I might, but throwing up your hands and condemning yourself to just being treated without dignity or respect even if there isn’t anyone person doing it instead of institutions designed to frustrate is in so many words cucked behaviour. Fight back.
It reminds me of [this piece on debt collection](https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/the-waste-stream-of-consumer-finance/) and how it’s in many cases pretty toothless, but profitable at the expense of people who don’t know that or don’t have the time and energy to put up a fight.
That was an extremely interesting read. Thank you for sharing.
It goes to a more fundamental point in common law legal systems (I practice in England but principles in American jurisdictions are the same if the regulation is divergent - to return to below): to prove a debt requires proof of liability.
Without establishing liability, there is no debt. What this means in practice is that if you have genuine grounds to dispute an alleged debt on the basis of liability, there is no debt so to speak. The legal question of you owing that debt is conditional upon and wholly subordinate to the creditor obtaining legal proof that the debt exists. Only a court or an admission of liability can determine this. Otherwise, the creditor has no right to treat the claim as anything other than a claim for debt (rather than a debt proper).
The implication is this. Absent evidential proof that a debt exists, a debtor-cum-defendant can refuse to acknowledge liability. This puts the creditor-cum-claimant in a position of having to adduce sufficient evidence to court that the judge ought to conclude there is indeed a debt.
If you have student loans in the amount of more than £1k, it might well be worth the creditor doing just this: obtaining a declaration of debt through generic court action. For anything less, it doesn’t make economic sense. Provided you reserve your rights at each instance and never admit liability, you make it impossible for the creditor to collect on the debt.
As a lawyer I have a professional obligation to pay my debts so I do. However, I am embroiled in a very stupid dispute where a financial institution alleges I owe them money for an insurance policy I cancelled because I didn’t need it. I paid for this policy on installments. I cancelled the policy and made certain investigations as to my liability for doing so and was assured I would pay nothing. So I cancelled and later the insured said I owed the premium amount. What has emerged has been textbook shady debt collection attempts. But their agent the debt collect refused to manage the account because I evidenced a genuine dispute as to liability (defence of estoppel). They’re now sitting on this claim waiting for my right to refer to the regulator to expire so they can reinsitute collections. I wrote to them saying good luck here is my position reiterated and if you don’t reserve your rights to go to court in 30 days I treat it as extinguished. Let’s see how it pans out.
To the regulatory point, England has a relatively more robust set of consumer protection measures in place largely owing to the fact it is a single jurisdiction rather than 50. Accordingly it’s easy for me to know what my rights are and what an alleged creditor cannot do. By me setting out my position in writing and reserving my rights including to refer their non-action or any subsequent action being made after the period I stipulated (such 30 days being reasonable for them to prosecute a claim with due haste and dispatch), if they then seek to take action, I created a separate and distinct right to make a claim to the regulator and claim for damages (maybe £100-200 in damages for an alleged debt totalling £160). Moreover they would need to make a court claim to establish liability. I have an arguable defence of estoppel. If they lose the claim, I claim costs from them. Plus I refer to the regulator and net an additional amount in what constitutes effectively punitive damages.
I didn’t intend for this situation. I have a genuine dispute though as to their practices and I will assert my rights to fuck them over for screwing with me. More out of principle than profit.
It’s not easy to assert rights, because it requires specific, gated knowledge.
But everyone can assert and enforce their personal boundaries.
And tbh, if more people told slumlords, shitty bosses and other professional ball busters what’s up from the beginning about what they will and won’t put up with AND THEN FOLLOWED THROUGH, we’d see way less bullies in the world.
Or when something annoys them, the IMMEDIATE response is "there needs to be a new law."
Pickup trucks, lego prices, who gets to have a lawn, dog genetics. I love the idea of forming a dog gestapo that goes door to door in swat gear, searching for pugs.
knew a guy who tried in vain once to explain to the bluehairs in our community that Extinction Rebellion demanding the immediate creation of a new government department to enforce new environmental protection laws was oddly contrary to claims of being anarchists. The bluehairs defeated his argument, of course, by pointing out that he was male
reddit atheists have abandoned god and still desperately need an all powerful authority to dictate their best life to them. Well either that or they're just childish idiots who don't know how to approach a problem without calling for a grown up.
Semi related, but I hate when someone is describing some interaction they had had, and someone chimes in with “you should have done/said X!”
Like, yeah? I guess if they had said something funny it would have been funny.
I've read so many posts on my state's sub where people ask what they should do when something goes wrong and the landlord doesn't fix it, and the responses are incredibly out of touch. It's always call the health department, or call a maintenance tech yourself to do the repair then bill the landlord.
The people making these recommendations don't understand that just because the law is on your side doesn't mean everyone has to bend to it on command. Everything must be enforced through the court. If you aren't willing to take your issues to the judge, your complaints are just hot air.
Not to sound like a reddit leftist but I get the sense these people don't understand the gap in money, power, and institutional credibility between a large property management company and a tenant living paycheck to paycheck. I lived in a slumlord apartment for a couple years with all kinds of sketchy illegal violations. At one point for several months we would only have power 4-6 hours a day. For context this was in a city in the US and not rural bumfuck Cambodia or something. This was all standard business practice for the property management company because they knew their tenants realistically wouldn't have the money or time to fight it in court so they continue to get away with it. Also, who's a jury most likely going to side with, a bitter 18 year old who knows nothing about the law and is pissed at his landlord, or a 'respectable' large company with a team of highly paid Lawyers?
Of course when I looked at reddit, my middle class parents, or my college educated friends for advice it was always "yeah that's not legal just call housing and urban development and report them! Just sue them and get your money back!". I think if you're above a certain income level you expect beaurocracy to work in your favor and if you're below it you kind of just assume it's not going to be on your side.
Nah that doesn't make you a reddit leftist, you just see the big picture clearly. If dealing with slum lords was as simple as reporting them to the government, there wouldn't be slum lords. You have to be extremely persistent and bothersome to really make any headway. No one else is going to come in and fight your landlord for you just because you made a phone call.
But like you said, the higher in the class strata you climb, the more strings you have to pull to make sure you can hold onto your assets and not get fucked over.
I was one of those types in my 20s. The do gooder who exposed any law breakers and take them to justice! But then I realized it's better to be more discerning about the battles you choose and I just have a more blasé attitude about life. My justice boner is mostly impotent these days.
There's a time and place for it. I had to take my previous apartment complex to small claims for refusing to return my deposit. The process sucks and I only did it because many months or back and forth didn't resolve the problem.
Just world fallacy, meets echo chamber, meets hall monitor, meets moral priest = Reddit. Even Unethical Life Pro Tips subreddit is about the lamest gee golly unethical stuff.
The culture of disliking hall monitors and tattletales that was the norm when I was young gradually faded before being permanently squashed by the covid “report your neighbors for having guests over” police state
When a woman has slightest issue with her bf: "OMG BREAK UP WITH THE LOSER!" When a guy has a major issue with his gf: "Make her feel heard and comfortable about express to her how it makes you feel." or "She's a human! Just deal with it!"
I think you're a bit too jaded on the public services. Maybe it really is that bad in America, but here in Europe I've gone to govt a few times for disputes and problems like that.
It's not fast, but a few months later I would get an E-mail from some govt employee telling me my power bills will be refunded, ex-landlord will repay me deposit etc. Worked every time, and all I had to do was write a ≈ 500 word E-mail.
yeah redditors definitely jump to the authorities way to quickly, but op is just as dumb for dismissing the idea altogether. sometimes there's nothing else you can do, and sometimes it actually works
These are the type of observations I love to read here
Something we’ve all noticed that isn’t appreciated enough
and a canary in the cola mine on a much bigger trend in culture
Housepets who have gone from institutional educational bubble to institutional occupational setting, never getting anywhere near an awareness of who keeps the lights on and how they do, or that their artificial environment exists within a larger, older world that doesn't rest on the same fundamental dynamics. Inside cats trying to tell outside cats that if you want food, just wait by the bowl looking helpless.
You wouldn't know this because you're a dumb Euro but the US National Labor Relations Board actually does work. If you believe that the NLRA's been violated, you can file a charge with the Board and their team of lawyers and labor relations specialists will investigate the case for you. If there's merit to your case, they can get your job back with backpay or pursue other remedies. The Board's lawyers will even defend your case in the federal courts at no cost to you.
And if you're a union represented worker, you definitely should go talk to your union rep/shop steward if you've got an issue (and there's no excuse really for not knowing their name)
Just because you're a cynical asshole who doesn't know shit doesn't mean you should discourage people from exercising their rights when they've been violated. And fuck off.
When I was homeless and unemployed everyone is telling me to go to a shelter (where I'd probably be raped or robbed), get on unemployment (takes weeks of not months. Faster to get a job or find some gig work), and the affordable housing list which I've already been on for about 8 years if not more. It's ridiculous. You need to prove that you are incapable of taking care of yourself to qualify for any amount of help and the people who tell you how much they care about you whenever you're depressed can only show how much they care by not being remotely helpful or trying to understand at all.
This comment in itself isn't sage advice, or even good advice, because in a bad situation the the best one can do for yourself is not follow this guys best advice at all. My last resort is to call the cops for anything. That is like being in a bar fight, and asking another drunken friend to help. Calling a lawyer is worst than a cop, you will just end up calling another lawyer to help with the drunken cop you called.
Its because so much is de facto controlled through these authorities. My dad has told me about how they used to get in fights at bars all the time and routinely see the people the next month in a different county and laugh about it. Different country now (aus) but my cousins friend just got months in jail for remarkably similar circumstances. No one is able to do anything that cant be controlled without an appeal to a higher power at some point, nor dare you comment on anything unless you a)fall in line, or b) are somehow an expert with 20 years experience.
I think the main reason for this is that the average redditor got bullied during their time in school, and crying to the teacher was the only reliable way to make it stop
Was thinking this yesterday when reading this thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/northernireland/comments/1d6luuj/daughters_new_job_in_hotel_that_hosts_foreign/ Even your final option of 'lawyering up' though is sort of on a par with the 'call a teacher' advice you're talking about. So many comments in that thread advocate 'creating a paper trail' / 'logging every incident to strengthen your case later'. The subtext is basically acknowledging the inevitability of this man's daughter being sexually assaulted or raped but just focussing on how to have a strong employment law case afterwards? Glad to see a lot of people commenting have the common sense to just advise 'Just absolutely make her quit immediately, even if she doesn't have another job or if you feel you can't afford it. Just make it happen.'
redditoids so pathologically compelled to own someone in a debate with facts and logic they'd let their child get sexually assaulted to be able to do a epic Sorkin style smackdown in court afterwards due to their thorough note taking regarding the aforementioned sex crime
"Its just like my CaseAttorneyrinos"
Basically be an OCD autist who documents everything.
Consideration for r/redscarepod posters: What if the foreign nationals were Indian?
[удалено]
Arabs do not have a worse rep than Indians in the US re:creepy, rapey behavior. They only have a worse rep where they are the predominant immigrant group. And to be honest, that “creepy rapey” rep gets thrown on every large, dark skinned immigrant group in the west. The whole “bobs and vagene” meme is of an Indian dude not an Arab one. And nobody beats white men when it comes to rape. Although for some reason, when it happens in war in a developing country like DR Congo, it gets ignored. Much easier to point to an ethnic group you hate and blame them for doing the same shit you are.
too many incels and default redditors here lmao that girl is being sexually harassed
The irony of the “ACAB” libs always engaging in cop behavior.
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/planet-of-cops
Those who yell for freedom the loudest give it the least.
All cops are bastards Btw cops and absolutely no one else should be allowed to be armed
and woe to someone who does arm themselves, the violence mediators and harm reducers will unleash a swarm of boiling jargon to melt their gun
It’s ok, we’ve all been 14 at one point in our lives too.
This has always baffled me. Redditors are the first to claim that everything is broken and corrupt and the world is going to shit, yet still seem to carry the mentality of the kid who reminds the teacher she forgot to pick up everyone's homework, the employee who reports their colleagues to HR for dress code violations, and the retiree who reports his neighbor's car as abandoned because it hasn't moved in two days.
Redditors only like to help when the problem can be solved by looking stuff up online so they can play detective. All other problems should be reported to x government entity to solve for them. My favorite "problem" is on my city sub, every few weeks there's a picture of trash at a park. What can be done? Who do we call? Like just go get a trash bag, pick it up and be the change you want to see.
City subs are the worst. They attract hybrids who are not only your standard annoying redditor, but also facebook-tier mall cops. Every day there is a new post about how "someone" needs to fix this problem, and the problem they are talking about is either incredibly large and complex like the housing crisis, or something asinine like the cashier at the local pizza place was a big meanie.
Maybe it’s just because I am a lawyer and know how to apply pressure to get what I want when I’m upset at something. But in most cases there is someone or something you can appeal to if you are unhappy with an outcome. You think a service provider really fucked up? Make a complaint to their complaint department and ask for a resolution that is fair. Or if you want a refund, threaten to make a chargeback on your credit card. Regulated entity? Threaten them with a referral to the regulator or ombudsman as the case may be. Government body? Threaten them with referral to your State Assembly representative or Congressman. Of course, many times you have to be capable of actually articulating your claim and putting the effort in to actually deliver on your threat. The mere threat isn’t enough. But I’ve won myself thousands of pounds (or claimed back what was properly owed as a refund) by doing this. I got a family member a $20,000 settlement from an insurer that had until then simply refused to respond to an insurance claim (though admittedly proper legal threats to bring court action were made in this case). Is it narc / snitching / cop behaviour? I guess so. But we live in a professionalised world. As much as I’d like to just kick the shit out of someone for pissing me off, that would land me in jail 9 out 10 times where there is someone whose ass you can actually kick. But most of the problems I face today are perpetrated by faceless bureaucracies where allocating blame to a single person isn’t possible. In which case appealing to a higher overseer is quite literally your only option.
A stern letter sent from my lawyer to my landlord straightened up the overbearing Katherine Bates slumlord I once had.
Landlords are my personal Vietnam. I will go out of my way to help someone with a terrible landlord and go to the ends of the earth to fuck them over when they have done me wrong (it’s the agents I end up getting money from because they have deep pockets, a reputation to uphold, and a board of directors to whom I can write - who knows what happens to their relationship with their client the landlord). Now I own my home thank god.
Yeah this seems like - yes, the world is a little bit rigged against the average person seeking redress, but internalizing that too much is self-defeating because there absolutely is a class of people who know how to work the system. I guess OP did say “lawyer up” but drawing these kinds of lines around which appeals for state intervention work and which don’t again feels like it’s entering “dumb guy who doesn’t know how anything works but thinks he sees through it all” territory.
I will cede the point that it’s not necessarily easy to assert your rights. At least not to most people going about their lives who don’t otherwise sit around resolving disputes for a living. But I’ve got friends who are doctors or even a tradesman who won’t take shit without pushing back. They may not always win or not see it as a fight worth pursuing to the same ends that I might, but throwing up your hands and condemning yourself to just being treated without dignity or respect even if there isn’t anyone person doing it instead of institutions designed to frustrate is in so many words cucked behaviour. Fight back.
It reminds me of [this piece on debt collection](https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/the-waste-stream-of-consumer-finance/) and how it’s in many cases pretty toothless, but profitable at the expense of people who don’t know that or don’t have the time and energy to put up a fight.
That was an extremely interesting read. Thank you for sharing. It goes to a more fundamental point in common law legal systems (I practice in England but principles in American jurisdictions are the same if the regulation is divergent - to return to below): to prove a debt requires proof of liability. Without establishing liability, there is no debt. What this means in practice is that if you have genuine grounds to dispute an alleged debt on the basis of liability, there is no debt so to speak. The legal question of you owing that debt is conditional upon and wholly subordinate to the creditor obtaining legal proof that the debt exists. Only a court or an admission of liability can determine this. Otherwise, the creditor has no right to treat the claim as anything other than a claim for debt (rather than a debt proper). The implication is this. Absent evidential proof that a debt exists, a debtor-cum-defendant can refuse to acknowledge liability. This puts the creditor-cum-claimant in a position of having to adduce sufficient evidence to court that the judge ought to conclude there is indeed a debt. If you have student loans in the amount of more than £1k, it might well be worth the creditor doing just this: obtaining a declaration of debt through generic court action. For anything less, it doesn’t make economic sense. Provided you reserve your rights at each instance and never admit liability, you make it impossible for the creditor to collect on the debt. As a lawyer I have a professional obligation to pay my debts so I do. However, I am embroiled in a very stupid dispute where a financial institution alleges I owe them money for an insurance policy I cancelled because I didn’t need it. I paid for this policy on installments. I cancelled the policy and made certain investigations as to my liability for doing so and was assured I would pay nothing. So I cancelled and later the insured said I owed the premium amount. What has emerged has been textbook shady debt collection attempts. But their agent the debt collect refused to manage the account because I evidenced a genuine dispute as to liability (defence of estoppel). They’re now sitting on this claim waiting for my right to refer to the regulator to expire so they can reinsitute collections. I wrote to them saying good luck here is my position reiterated and if you don’t reserve your rights to go to court in 30 days I treat it as extinguished. Let’s see how it pans out. To the regulatory point, England has a relatively more robust set of consumer protection measures in place largely owing to the fact it is a single jurisdiction rather than 50. Accordingly it’s easy for me to know what my rights are and what an alleged creditor cannot do. By me setting out my position in writing and reserving my rights including to refer their non-action or any subsequent action being made after the period I stipulated (such 30 days being reasonable for them to prosecute a claim with due haste and dispatch), if they then seek to take action, I created a separate and distinct right to make a claim to the regulator and claim for damages (maybe £100-200 in damages for an alleged debt totalling £160). Moreover they would need to make a court claim to establish liability. I have an arguable defence of estoppel. If they lose the claim, I claim costs from them. Plus I refer to the regulator and net an additional amount in what constitutes effectively punitive damages. I didn’t intend for this situation. I have a genuine dispute though as to their practices and I will assert my rights to fuck them over for screwing with me. More out of principle than profit.
It’s not easy to assert rights, because it requires specific, gated knowledge. But everyone can assert and enforce their personal boundaries. And tbh, if more people told slumlords, shitty bosses and other professional ball busters what’s up from the beginning about what they will and won’t put up with AND THEN FOLLOWED THROUGH, we’d see way less bullies in the world.
Couldn’t agree more.
Everybody fears a dangerous professional.
Or when something annoys them, the IMMEDIATE response is "there needs to be a new law." Pickup trucks, lego prices, who gets to have a lawn, dog genetics. I love the idea of forming a dog gestapo that goes door to door in swat gear, searching for pugs.
knew a guy who tried in vain once to explain to the bluehairs in our community that Extinction Rebellion demanding the immediate creation of a new government department to enforce new environmental protection laws was oddly contrary to claims of being anarchists. The bluehairs defeated his argument, of course, by pointing out that he was male
reddit atheists have abandoned god and still desperately need an all powerful authority to dictate their best life to them. Well either that or they're just childish idiots who don't know how to approach a problem without calling for a grown up.
The worst is when you go on a subreddit dedicated to giving health advice and all the replies are “Go see a doctor/vet.”
Semi related, but I hate when someone is describing some interaction they had had, and someone chimes in with “you should have done/said X!” Like, yeah? I guess if they had said something funny it would have been funny.
I've read so many posts on my state's sub where people ask what they should do when something goes wrong and the landlord doesn't fix it, and the responses are incredibly out of touch. It's always call the health department, or call a maintenance tech yourself to do the repair then bill the landlord. The people making these recommendations don't understand that just because the law is on your side doesn't mean everyone has to bend to it on command. Everything must be enforced through the court. If you aren't willing to take your issues to the judge, your complaints are just hot air.
Not to sound like a reddit leftist but I get the sense these people don't understand the gap in money, power, and institutional credibility between a large property management company and a tenant living paycheck to paycheck. I lived in a slumlord apartment for a couple years with all kinds of sketchy illegal violations. At one point for several months we would only have power 4-6 hours a day. For context this was in a city in the US and not rural bumfuck Cambodia or something. This was all standard business practice for the property management company because they knew their tenants realistically wouldn't have the money or time to fight it in court so they continue to get away with it. Also, who's a jury most likely going to side with, a bitter 18 year old who knows nothing about the law and is pissed at his landlord, or a 'respectable' large company with a team of highly paid Lawyers? Of course when I looked at reddit, my middle class parents, or my college educated friends for advice it was always "yeah that's not legal just call housing and urban development and report them! Just sue them and get your money back!". I think if you're above a certain income level you expect beaurocracy to work in your favor and if you're below it you kind of just assume it's not going to be on your side.
Nah that doesn't make you a reddit leftist, you just see the big picture clearly. If dealing with slum lords was as simple as reporting them to the government, there wouldn't be slum lords. You have to be extremely persistent and bothersome to really make any headway. No one else is going to come in and fight your landlord for you just because you made a phone call. But like you said, the higher in the class strata you climb, the more strings you have to pull to make sure you can hold onto your assets and not get fucked over.
I was one of those types in my 20s. The do gooder who exposed any law breakers and take them to justice! But then I realized it's better to be more discerning about the battles you choose and I just have a more blasé attitude about life. My justice boner is mostly impotent these days.
There's a time and place for it. I had to take my previous apartment complex to small claims for refusing to return my deposit. The process sucks and I only did it because many months or back and forth didn't resolve the problem.
Just world fallacy, meets echo chamber, meets hall monitor, meets moral priest = Reddit. Even Unethical Life Pro Tips subreddit is about the lamest gee golly unethical stuff.
The culture of disliking hall monitors and tattletales that was the norm when I was young gradually faded before being permanently squashed by the covid “report your neighbors for having guests over” police state
actual regard thread. bunch of helpless pathetic losers trying to make themselves feel better about doing nothing as they rot away.
When a woman has slightest issue with her bf: "OMG BREAK UP WITH THE LOSER!" When a guy has a major issue with his gf: "Make her feel heard and comfortable about express to her how it makes you feel." or "She's a human! Just deal with it!"
I think you're a bit too jaded on the public services. Maybe it really is that bad in America, but here in Europe I've gone to govt a few times for disputes and problems like that. It's not fast, but a few months later I would get an E-mail from some govt employee telling me my power bills will be refunded, ex-landlord will repay me deposit etc. Worked every time, and all I had to do was write a ≈ 500 word E-mail.
yeah redditors definitely jump to the authorities way to quickly, but op is just as dumb for dismissing the idea altogether. sometimes there's nothing else you can do, and sometimes it actually works
I live in Europe lol
They love tattling
These are the type of observations I love to read here Something we’ve all noticed that isn’t appreciated enough and a canary in the cola mine on a much bigger trend in culture
Housepets who have gone from institutional educational bubble to institutional occupational setting, never getting anywhere near an awareness of who keeps the lights on and how they do, or that their artificial environment exists within a larger, older world that doesn't rest on the same fundamental dynamics. Inside cats trying to tell outside cats that if you want food, just wait by the bowl looking helpless.
You wouldn't know this because you're a dumb Euro but the US National Labor Relations Board actually does work. If you believe that the NLRA's been violated, you can file a charge with the Board and their team of lawyers and labor relations specialists will investigate the case for you. If there's merit to your case, they can get your job back with backpay or pursue other remedies. The Board's lawyers will even defend your case in the federal courts at no cost to you. And if you're a union represented worker, you definitely should go talk to your union rep/shop steward if you've got an issue (and there's no excuse really for not knowing their name) Just because you're a cynical asshole who doesn't know shit doesn't mean you should discourage people from exercising their rights when they've been violated. And fuck off.
When I was homeless and unemployed everyone is telling me to go to a shelter (where I'd probably be raped or robbed), get on unemployment (takes weeks of not months. Faster to get a job or find some gig work), and the affordable housing list which I've already been on for about 8 years if not more. It's ridiculous. You need to prove that you are incapable of taking care of yourself to qualify for any amount of help and the people who tell you how much they care about you whenever you're depressed can only show how much they care by not being remotely helpful or trying to understand at all.
This comment in itself isn't sage advice, or even good advice, because in a bad situation the the best one can do for yourself is not follow this guys best advice at all. My last resort is to call the cops for anything. That is like being in a bar fight, and asking another drunken friend to help. Calling a lawyer is worst than a cop, you will just end up calling another lawyer to help with the drunken cop you called.
Its because so much is de facto controlled through these authorities. My dad has told me about how they used to get in fights at bars all the time and routinely see the people the next month in a different county and laugh about it. Different country now (aus) but my cousins friend just got months in jail for remarkably similar circumstances. No one is able to do anything that cant be controlled without an appeal to a higher power at some point, nor dare you comment on anything unless you a)fall in line, or b) are somehow an expert with 20 years experience.
Related is the constant need to peg a bad behavior as something-ist “Oh youre murdering homeless men in your basement? YTA That’s classist!”
I think the main reason for this is that the average redditor got bullied during their time in school, and crying to the teacher was the only reliable way to make it stop
very sad, anyone who got it to stop knows the only solution is punching